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TH£ P.-. ELEA7AR WILLIAMS 
Prom ii.Forlrait by il lv O . i'J' al I ." ■ F'lan 



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FACTS TENDING TO PROVK 



THE IDENTITY OF 



LOUIS THE SEVENTEENTH, OF FRANCE, 



REV. ELEAZAR WILLIAMS, 

MISSIONARY AMONG THE INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA 



JOHJT H. HANSON 



Thbrb 13 no historical tmth against which ob3tin:icy cannot raise many objections. Many people think 
themselves justified in asserting against an alleged historical fact its improbiibility, without considering that 
nothing is true or untrue in the eye of history becanse it is probable or improbable, but simply because assuming 
its general logical possibility, it can be proved to be or not to be a fact. — Bunsen. 

On applying, after a number of years, to the evidence of facts, it will always be found, in the end, that 
probability is in aU things the best symptom of truth— Lamartine. 



NEW YORK: 
G. P. PUTNAM & CO., 10 PARK PLACE. 

1854. 



3 






Entexred according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S53, by 

G. P. PUTNAM & CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New- York. 



«?. Estates Miss R..HPutnan, 
Sept. 14, 193- 



W. H. TiNsoN, Stereotyper, &c., 

22 Spruce Street, New York, 



THE REY. ¥RMm L. HAWKS, D.D., LL.D., 

AT WHOSE SUGGESTION THE INVESTIGATION 

INTO 

THE HISTORY OF THE REV. ELEAZAE, WILLIAMS, 
WAS FIRST UNDERTAKEN, 

WHICH EXHIBITS AN OUTLINE OP ITS RESULTS, 

33 lUspntfnlltt BBiitnteir, 

ALIKE AS A TOKEN OF ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS, ^STEEM FOR 
HIS VIRTUES, AND GRATITUDE FOR HIS KINDNESS 

BY 

HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND AND BROTHER IN THE MINISTRY, 

THE AUTHOR. 



PREFACE 



The public, I trust, is sensible by this time, that in this investi- 
gation there has been no attempt to impose on its credulity. 
If there be aught I hate, next to injustice, and against which I 
would stoutly contend, it is what Carlyle calls shams. The chief 
interest in this discussion is its intense reality. With Mr. Wil- 
liams, as a clergyman, it has become a vital question of veracity ; 
and I would not have published one word on the subject, had I 
not been morally convinced of his truthfulness, since I would not, 
for the sake of any temporary, but worthless literary eclat^ trifle 
with the fortunes of a suffering brother in the ministry. He is 
no claimant for royal name, any more than he is an aspirant for 
political elevation. He stands in the position of one who asserts 
facts, the confirmation of which is derived, without his aid, 
from the most widely different sources. Even with respect to 
his journals and the events of his life, the use I have made 
of them in the argument, is as novel to him as it is to others. 
And for myself, I seek only to establish a historical fact, and let 
that fact take care of itself. 

I received, this morning, a call from a gentleman, who 
represented himself to be a friend of M. de Beauchesne, whose 
curiosity, I find, is roused by the circumstances of Mr. Wil- 
liams's life, though it would appear from the statements of this 
gentleman, M. de Beauchesne knew much of his history many 
years before I heard of his existence. Long before the conclu- 
sion of the reign of Louis Philippe, I learn that M. de Beau- 
chesne had his name registered, among some thirty others, of 
whom it had been asserted that they were Louis XVH. This 
fact is of high importance, for, as M. de Beauchesne, if he did 
not write under the command of the French government, did bo 
with its knowledge, it affords evidence, that in France, the name 



VI PREFACE. 

of Mr. Williams was associated with the history of the Dauphin, 
and, therefore, renders more equivocal the conduct of the Prince 
de Joinville, in professing ignorance of the name of Mr. 
Williams. Where so much deception has been practised, it is 
difficult to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty, 
and, although the motives which animated the composition 
of the work of M. de Beauchesne remain yet a mystery, it 
will afford me great pleasure to find he is no partizan, bent 
on the falsification of history, but is honestly devoted to 
the discovery of truth. By chronicling facts which came 
under his knowledge, he has rendered great service. A 
fact, however trivial, is inestimable — even a fact concerning 
falsehood — and, in due time, finds its place in a chain of 
evidence. M. de Beauchesne is seeking to obtain from the 
imperial government permission to examine the cemetery of St. 
Marguerite, and will, I hope, succeed ; for, though the result 
would throw no light on the question of identity, it might aid in 
developing some details of the history. 

I would take this opportunity of acknowledging many favors 
received, during this investigation, from the Hon. Hamilton Fish, 
the Hon. J. C. Spencer, the Provisional Bishop of New York, 
the Bishop of California, the Rev. Dr. Vinton, of Brooklyn, Dr. 
J. W. Francis, Mr. John Jay, Mr. Beach, of the Sun, the Cheva- 
lier Fagnani, Mr. Bogle, Mr. G. Genet, Mr. E. Genet, the Rev. 
Dr. Leacock, and the Clergy generally of New Orleans, Mr. 
Bradford, of that city, the Rev. Mr. Wells, of Boston, the Rev. 
Mr. Denroche, of Brockville, C. W., the Hon. Pliineas Attwater, 
and many others. But more especially would I return thanks to 
the Rev. Dr. Hawks, and Mr. A. Fleming, in whom I have 
always found firm and judicious friends. With the one, long 
known, long loved, and long honored, this investigation has 
only served as a cement of friendship, and with the other, it will 
be, I trust, a bond of affection, lasting as life, since I can never 
forget the generous spirit he has manifested throughout. 

Hoboient N. X, November 22, 1853, 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PRINCIPLES. 

Outline of the work — Probability — Bishop Butler — Newspaper Critics 
— Question to be discussed — Cui bono ? 13 

CHAPTER II. 
REVOLUTION. 

Louis XIV. — Louis XV. — Louis XVL — Marie Antoinette — The Count 
de Provence — the Count D'Artois — the Letter of Death — French 
and American Revolutions contrasted — Ambition of the Count de 
Provence — Conspiracy against the Queen and her Children — the 
States General — Flight of the Emigi-ants — Conspiracy of the Mar- 
quis de Favras — Flight to Varennes — the Countess de Balbi — Mon- 
sieur and Robespierre — Trying situation of the King and Queen — 
Attempts to create Monsieur Regent — Coblentz — the Legislative 
Assembly — The Marseillais — 10th August — the Swiss . . .20 

CHAPTER III. 
CHILDHOOD. 

Birth of the Duke of Normandy — Fall of the Ptegalia — Omen — Death 
of the First Dauphin — Personal appearance of the Second Dauphin 
— Anecdotes — Masquerade and Misery 39 

CHAPTER IV. 
THE ORPHANS. 

Tower of the Temple— Trial of Louis XVL— the King's Will— Death 

Proclamation of the Regent — Last Letter of Marie Antoinette — 

Execution ^1 

CHAPTER V. 
SIMON. 

Marat— Marie Jeane— Revel— Fidelity in Evil— Solitude— Insanity- 
Rescue 66 

CHAPTER VI. 

INTRIGUE. 

The Fall of Robespierre— M. de Beauchesne— Testimony of thieves in 
their own favor— Intrigues of the Agents of the Regent— Laurent 



Viii CONTENTS. 

PAOB 



the Marqiiis de Fenouil — Gomin — Doisy — Debierne — Lifenard — 

Treaty with Charette—Harmand—Lasne— Prospects of the Royal- 
ists m 1795 



78 



CHAPTER VII. 
DISAPPEARANCE. 

Sickness of the Dauphin — Desault — No Scrofula — Bell anger— Death 
of Desault — Five Days at the most Critical Period left unaccounted 
for — Ireland — the National Guard — the Death of Somebody — Police 
Kecords — Escape of the Prince — Proces Verbal — Authentic Demon- 
stration of a Physical Impossibility — Testimony of M. MuUer — 
Desault — Vendeean Treaty — Circumstances versus Words . . 95 

CHAPTER VIII. 
FUNERAL. SOLEMNITIES AND DRIED HEART. 

Got rid of— Proclamation of Louis XVIII. — ^Yearnings of France for 
a Father — Liberation of Madame Uoyale — Matrimony without 
Courtship — Suppression of the War in La Vendee — the Empire — 
the Royal Monomaniac — Fall of Napoleon — Cemetery of the Made- 
leine — Omission of respect for the memory of Louis XVII. — An 
Epitaph in Limbo — Cemetery of St. Marguerite — the Heart — 
Critics and Historians . . . • . • • • .122 



CHAPTERIX. 
NAUNDORFF AND RICHEMONT. 

Hervagault — ^Marturin Bruneau — Percival — Early History of Naun- 
dortf — Agents in the Escape of the Dauphin — Martin — St. Didier 
— the Duchess D'Angouleme — Interview with the King of Prussia — 
Letter of Naundorff— Mystery— M. Lamprade— M. de Rochow— M. 
de Gaeriviere — Labreli de Fontaine — Pezold — M. Abeille — Cha- 
rette — Summary — Puichenaont — Madame de Chateaubriand . . 145 

CHAPTER X. 
ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 

The Old and New World — Madame de Jardin — Monsieur Louis — 
Skenondogh — Lake George — Rev. John Williams — Deerfield — M. 
de Vaudreuil — De Rouville — Death of Mrs. Williams — Eunice — 
Thomas Williams — Revolutionary War — Head of Lake George — 
Fir.st Recollections — Wigwam — the Visit — Deacon Ely — Mrs. Jewett 
— Urania Stebbins — Acquaintance of Ely with the Secret of Mr. 
Williams's birth — Miss Grosvenor — Mrs. Jenkins — Mrs. Dickenson 
— Mrs. Jewett — Mrs. Temple — Ely's Journal — Eleazar Williams's 
Journal — PLBvival — Puev. Thomas Williams — 111 health — Travelling 
— First visit to Montreal — Portrait — Bishop Chevreu.K — President 
Dwight — Mental Phenomena — Hanover — Mr. Ely's death — Mans- 
field 175 



CONTENTS. IX 

pioa 

CHAPTER XI. 
THE SECRET CORPS. 

Missionary Tour to Canada — Prayer for the Indians — ^American Eoard 
— War of 1812 — Gen. Dearborn — Gov. Tompkins — Superintendent 
General of the Northern Indian Department — Gen. Mooers — Travel- 
ling in the Woods — Gen. Bloomfield — St. Regis taken — Council of 
War— End of the Campaign of 1812 218 

CHAPTER XII. 
THE WAR JOURNAL. 

The Rangers — Sir Geo. Provost — Danger of Surprise — Divinity and 
War — Death of Col. Pike at Toronto — Commodore McDonough — 
Sacketts Harbor — Capture of Lieut. Smith — Gen. Hampton — Pro- 
posed Plan of Campaign — Rev. Mr. Clowes — Gen. Wilkinson — Isla 
Aux Noix — Stone Mill — Gen. Izard — Gen. Maoombe — Strength of 
British force — Battle of Plattsburg — ^Victory — Confinement from 
wound ... 230 

CHAPTER XIII. 
THE LAY MISSIONARY. 

Qualifications for an Indian Missionary — Treaty of Peace — The Epis- 
copal Church — The Rev. Dr. Butler — Dr. Hossack — First acquaint- 
ance with Dr. J. W. Francis — Bishop Hobart — Rev. Mr. Onderdonk 
— Rev. E. C. Stewart — St. Regis — Oneida — Conversion of Six Hun- 
dred Pagans — the Menomenies and the Winnebagoes — Honi soit 
qui mal y pense — Procrusteanism in accidents — Poverty — Self-sacri- 
fice — Interview with Rev. Mr. Richards, at Montreal — Confirmation 
— Indian Council — Debate with Red Jacket — Proposed Removal of 
New York Indians — Dr. Morse — Lieut.-Gov. Woodbridge — De Witt 
Clinton — Monroe and Calhoun — Purchase of Land by N. Y. Indians 
in the West — Dissatisfaction at Oneida — Mr. Solomon Davis — Rev. 
Mr. Lacy — Mrs. Sigourney — Emigration to the West . . . 270 

CHAPTER XIV. 
MARRIAGE AND ORDINATION. 

Indian Affairs — Project of Mr. Williams for the Regeneration of the 
Indians — Green Bay — Chapel in the Garrison — Marriage — Estate 
of Mrs. Williams — Charge of Romanism — ^Duck Creek — Ordination 
— Bishop Hobart's Address 295 

CHAPTER XV. 
REVERSES. 

Difficulties between the Menomenies and the New York Indians — 
Sanction of the Purchase by the United States Government — Gen. 
Cass — Hon. D. A. Ogden — Mr. Trowbridge — Butte des Morts — Oiscoss 
— Hell Creek — Manslaughter and Murder — Missionary Duty and 
Compensation — Poverty — Rev. Mr. Colton — Commission of 1830 — 
Gen. Cass — Bishop Onderdonk — Washington — Immorality among 
the Indians — Farewell Sermon — School at St. Regis — ^Lord Aylmer 

1* 



X CONTENTS. 

PJlOB 
— ^Treaty of 1836 — Schermerhom and Gillet — A Letter — Mr. Eld- 
ridge — Btev. Dr. Lothrop — Loss of Property — Affliction . . 305 

CHAPTER XVI. 
OUR FIRST INTERVIEW. 

Adventure on Lake Champlain — Marie Antoinette — Description of Mr. 
WiUiams 336 

chapter xvii. 
Putnam's magazine. 
Hon J. C. Spencer — Dr. Hawks — Dr. J. W. Francis — Le Ray de 
Chaumont — Biliaud Varennes, and Genet — De Ferriere — Letter 
from Mr. Williams — Hogansburg — Professor Day — Caughnawaga — 
Interview with the Prince de Joinville — Journal for 1841 — Mr. Ogden 
— Mr. Bowker — K/ecord of Interview with the Prince — Journal for 
1848 — Rev. Joshua Leavitt — Question of Veracity between Mr. 
Willianaa and the Prince de Joinville — Putnam's Magazine . . 347 

chapter XVIII. 
TOKENS OF personal IDENTITY. 

Resemblance to the Bourbons — the Chevalier Fagnani — M. Muller — 
French Officer — Count de Balbi — Indian Characteristics — Marks on 
the Body of Louis XVII. — Medical Certificates — Arithmetical 
Problem 387 

CHAPTER XIX. 
THE PRINGE DE JOINVILLE AND M. A. DE BEAUCHESNE. 

The Prince de Joinville— the " Phare de New York" and Mr. H. De 
Courcey — Letter of the Prince de Joinville — Examined and re- 
examined — Capt. Shook — Mr. Brayman — Mr. Raymond — M. Trog- 
non — Correspondence between Mr. Williams and the Prince de 
Joinville — Mr. George Sumner — ^Appeal to Beauchesne — Motives of 
Louis Philippe . . 400 

chapter XX. 

the battle OF the affidavits. 
New Orleans — Adventures of the Wife of the Secretary of the Count 
D'Artois — Conversation with the Duchess D'Angouleme — Bellangei 
— Affidavit composed by the Rev. Mr. Marcoux — Affidavit of Mrs. 
Williams 424 

CHAPTER XXI. 
KIN AND KIND. 

Dr. Stephen Williams 439 

CHAPTERXXII. 
CONCLUSION. 

Summary — Brother and Sister 446 

Appendix • . . 461 



M^;!"' M -'^^^-^M? u^>''": %?t*^^ 






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PART I. 



THE PALACE AND THE PRISON. 



tm0m^ mr-:^^^^^^ 






k- 



THE 



LOST PRINCE 



CHAPTER I. 



PEINOIPLE 



My object, in the following pages, is simply to group together 
for historic reference, the circumstances which tend to prove that 
in the person of a venerable clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, there is still living, in America, the representative of the 
ancient glories of the French Monarchy. 

The interest which this subject has excited, and the deep con- 
viction entertained by those who have had the best opportunity 
of judging of the truth of many of the facts upon which this 
.opinion is based, together with the inherent importance of the 
question, in a historic point of view, must form my apology for 
again appearing before the public in connexion with it. 

I have hesitated as to the precise form into which I should 
throw this little work. At first, my design did not extend beyond 
a reprint, with notes, of the original articles in which a por- 
tion of the evidence is contained, together with an Appendix 
furnishing the testimony which has since come to light. I was 
inclined to pursue this course because the easiest for a person whose 



I I THE LOST PRINCE. 

time is already fully occupied with professional duties, and also 
because anxious to exhibit in this way the gradual manner in which 
facts have been developed, as the investigation has proceeded. 
But, apart from the dislike of mere verbal repetition, there are 
many points of importance to the general understanding of the 
subject, and a correct estimate of the evidence, which I have either 
not alluded to, or but slightly touched upon, and which it is neces- 
sary to include, when throwing the matter into a permanent form. 
I have, therefore, determined to rewrite the whole, adopting the 
simplest and most natural plan, viz. to give a narrative of the 
main circumstances in what seem to be two lives spent in different 
hemispheres, and in forms of society the most widely different, but 
which, if there be truth in circumstantial evidence, blend harmo- 
niously into one, conducting the same individual from the palace 
and the prison to the wigwam, the camp, and the church. 

I shall begin by a cursory review of the events which led to 
the subvet'sion of the French Monarchy, towards the conclusion 
of the last century; of the imprisonment of the royal family ; of 
the tragical death of several of its members; and of the mysterious 
disappearance of the child whose strange after history forms, it is 
my belief, the principal portion of the following pages. As it is 
necessary to keep distinctly in view the thread of events on both 
sides of the Atlantic, as far as they have any bearing on the his- 
toric problem at issue, I shall next consider some of the subsequent 
changes in France, with especial reference to the history and move- 
ments of the members of the Bourbon family, and also give a sum- 
mary account of the pretensions and life of Herr Naundorf, all of 
which are deserving close attention. 

From Europe we shall next be carried by the necessities of the 
case to this country, and, after briefly tracing the romantic history 
of the family, in one of whose supposed members the lost Prince 
appears to be discovered, I will furnish from the most authentic 
sources all that is worthy of note, or has a bearing on the subject 
of our investigation, in the life of the Kev. Eleazar Williams, up 



PRINCIPLES. 15 

to the period of his interview with the Prince de Joinville. 
Here we enter on the great debateable ground, and must introduce, 
in substance, the matter which lias ah-eady appeared, bringing up 
the testimony to the time of publication. 

The introduction of many of the circumstances of Mr. Wil- 
liams's private life, which would otherwise have been omitted, has 
been forced upon me by others, and is necessary to clear away 
the obscurity which hangs over a chequered and sorrowful career. 
His journals and papers might never have seen the light but for the 
present discussion ; and it is with reluctance that he has permitted 
what was intended merely for his own eye, and which fi-om early 
boyhood has been kept in secrecy, to be made public. But every- 
thing which I shall produce weaves itself into the chain of "evi- 
dence, or is necessary for his vindication. 

That discussion of a somewhat exciting nature has been caused 
by what I have already written, is not surprising; for the question 
at issue is likely to awaken the most different feelings, according to 
the natural disposition of men, their power of weighing evidence, 
and estimating character, the social influences by which they are 
affected, and the direction from which they contemplate the sub- 
ject. Society is pretty equally divided between two classes of 
men, the generous and enthusiastic, and the cold and sceptical. 
The first are, perhaps, too ready to adopt, without sufficient exami- 
nation, whatever appeals to their sympathies, and addresses itself 
to their imagination — and the other are equally prone to form 
hasty conclusions against everything which seems strange and mar- 
vellous. It requires time to adjust these states of mind to each 
other, and to attain among masses of men to the true critical 
temper, which I conceive to be as far from precipitate incredulity, 
as it is- from precipitate belief — a happy compound of what is 
noble in sentiment and cool in judgment, and which as little 
mistakes ridicule for argument, as it does feeling for proof. It was 
to this temper that I have sought — it is to this that I still seek to 
address myself; and however those who have neither understood 



10 THE LOST PRINCE. 

my motives nor weighed my words, may have accused me of 
special pleading, or of jumping at conclusions, I can honestly 
say, that I have never knowingly strained a point of evidence 
beyond its just extent, or indicated a conclusion which facts did 
not seem fairly to warrant. Had the opposition I have met been 
merely the result of natural incredulity respecting the marvellous, 
the imperfection of the testimony adduced, or my own inability 
in handling the subject according to its merits, to v/hich no one 
would more wilHngly subscribe than myself, I should have had 
neither room nor desire to complain. But in many quarters, and 
from various motives, there have been attempts to put down 
discussion. Such attempts will never succeed in cases like this, 
where people have to deal with a man of ordinary firmness, 
convinced alike of the rectitude of his intentions and the power of 
his position. I have no desire, however, to perpetuate strife, and 
shall be silent concerning much which deserves animadversion. 

Before I plunge into the stream of rapidly shifting events, 
let me say a few words as to the nature of the evidence which it is 
reasonable to expect can be produced in a case like this, granting 
the sui)posed identity actually to exist. This is the natural point 
from which any candid mind will approach the subject. He will 
not ask impossibilities or improbabilities, and sneer because his 
demands are not complied with ; but being satisfied that a position 
is taken by its advocate in good faith, will expect him to produce 
only such evidence as under given circumstances it is rational to 
look for ; neither will he say that evidence is no evidence, because 
not of one particular kind, viz. demonstrative. 

There are comparatively only a few things — and those not afiect- 
ing our highest interests or appealing to our noblest faculties — which 
admit of demonstration. In all that is most important, morally, 
intellectually, historically, " probability is the very guide of life." 
Kot, however, such probability or improbability as Bunsen refers 
to in the passage placed on the title page — the mere coinage of the 
fancy, apart from or in defect of evidence — the familiar " it is 



PRINCIPLES. lY 

likel}^ or unlikely " of conversation — but probability based on tbe 
critical survey of varied fact and extensive data — such as Lamar- 
tine refers to when he says, " On applying after a number of years 
to the evidence of facts, it will always be found in the end that 
probability is in all things the best symptom of truth." In ascer- 
taining a disputed historic fact, the probabilities of every kind 
must be reckoned in as parts of the evidence determining its value; 
but the conclusion finally arrived at, if investigation be rightly 
conducted on sufficient data, is something more than mere proba- 
bility, something upon which we can rest as fact. 

" Probable evidence," says Bishop Butler, " is essentially distin- 
guished from demonstrative by this, that it admits of degrees, and of 
all variety of them, from the highest moral certainty to the very low- 
est presumption. "We cannot, indeed, say a thing is probably true 
upon one very slight presumption of it ; because, as there may be 
probabihties on both sides of a question, there may be some against 
it, and though there be not, yet a slight presumption does not 
beget that degree of conviction which is implied in saying a thing 
is probably true, but that the slightest possible, presumption is of 
the nature of a probability appears from hence, that such low pre- 
sumption often repeated will amount even to moral certainty." 
" In questions of difficulty, or such as are thought so, where more 
satisfactory evidence cannot be had, or is not seen, if the result of 
examination be that there appears upon the whole, any the lowest 
presumption on one side, and none on the other, or a greater pre- 
sumption on one side, though in the lowest degree greater, 
this determines the question even in matters of speculation." The 
question under consideration is one of probabilities, and I shall 
neither insult the understanding of the reader by denying, nor do 
I weaken my cause by confessing, that the probabilities prior to 
examination against the conclusion to which 1 arrive are very 
strong ; only I contend that the probabilities in its fevor are far 
stronger, and that to an extent which can leave little doubt to 
an impartial and reasoning mind of its truth, or, in other 



18 THS LOST PRINCE. 

words, which carries moral conviction very nearly to its fullest 
height. 

Now, granting that the supposed personal identity is actual, what 
kind of probable evidence is it likely can at this time and place be 
adduced in proof of it ? There is a great state secret affecting vitally 
the interests and the honor of some of the most distinguished per- 
sons in Europe, and which has done so for more than half a century. 
The parties interested in keeping it will, it is probable, both use every 
effort to suppress whatever evidence exists, and hold in their own 
hands all correspondence between themselves on the subject, and all 
communications proceeding from agents who from time to time they 
may have found it necessary to employ. In the absence, therefore, of 
original evidence of this description, the only conceivable means 
by which the secret can come to hght is the want of prudence in 
some of the parties concerned, or of fidelity in some of their agents? 
affording a clue or indication of its existence, and leading thoughtful 
minds to review carefully the whole field of the past, and gather into 
one focus all those tokens which an extraordinary event can scarcely 
fail to leave behind in its progress, and which, like foot prints and 
down-trodden grass and broken branches to the Indian in the forest, 
imperceptible or disregarded by the careless observer, conduct the 
diligent investigator directly and inevitably, with a precision like 
fate, to the very root and heart of the mystery. 

I should like to have seen one of a certain class of our modern 
newspaper critics and philosophers with eyes that never lock 
beyond the police intelligence and party politics of the day, and 
who has grown mole-sighted in falsifying the appearance of every- 
thing to suit the passions and prejudices to which he professionally 
panders, standing beside a quick-witted savage on the trail, wliose 
only aim was to find his way by aid of the faculties which God 
gave him. How acute would be his sagacity of denial! How 
potent his sceptical profundity ! What pointed paragraphs would 
he enter on his note book concerning the folly which saw a sign- 
post in a broken twig — a pathway in a bent reed, and Pillowed 



REVOLUTION. 



19 



the guiding of these in preference to verbal reports which he has 
no discernment to see are incongruous or false. There are many- 
ways of arriving at truth, and we live in times when History is 
written backward, and the wisely doubting Niebuhr of to-day is 
more to be trusted than the annalist who was two thousand years 
nearer the facts which they relate in common. 

The simple historic question under discussion is, whether, a 
person known in this country as the. Rev. Eleazar Wilhams be 
the son of Louis XYL of France, who it has been asserted died in the 
Temple in the year 1795. The negative of this can be shown clearly 
in either of three ways. 1. By proving that the son of Louis XVL 
in question died at the time and place mentioned. 2. By proving 
that the Rev. Eleazar Williams is an Indian. 3. By establishing as 
a tact, that although the Dauphin may not have died as reported, 
and Eleazar Williams is not an Indian as reported— there is nothing 
to prove a personal identity between them, or that the evidence 
adduced for this purpose is not rehable. The affirmative of 
the question on the contrary requires me to show that there is no 
reliance to be placed on the accounts given of the death of the 
royal child— that Eleazar Wilhams is not an Indian, and that the 
circumstantial identifying testimony is multifarious, strong, reliable 
and to the point. Here is the issue, and I meet it with no purpose 
or design, but to argue it on its merits. The audience in the pres- 
ence of which I speak is in itself a guarantee that I shall deal fairly 
with the subject. Besides which, belonging to a profession happily 
standing aloof from secular strife, and constitutionally inclined in 
all things to seek for truth, I have neither the art of the special 
X)leader nor the disposition of the sophist. If there be strengtli in 
my argument it is simply because facts clearly stated and logically 
reasoned from make it strong. 

It is beyond the wit of man to coin a chain of circumstantial evi- 
dence upon a great historic question like this which will bear 
examination. Various attempts have been made to do so, in all 
quarters by those to whom I stand opposed, but I regard them all 



20 THE LOST PRINCE. 

as signal failures. By some loophole or other the true state of the 
case will leak out. Whoever examines with candid and unpreju- 
diced mind the facts I have to present, instead of ridiculing any 
lack of evidence will, I think, express surprise that Providence has 
preserved, and rendered available here, so much testimony bearing 
on a remote point of European history. To those who meet the 
investigation with the query, cui bono? I have only to say,. it will 
be very unfortunate for mankind, morally and intellectually, when 
they find themselves in the majority — and where there is nothing in 
historic truth to awaken tlie curiosity, or in great reverses to excite 
the sympathy, of men. To me it seems a moral lesson, not unim- 
portant for the world's welfare, if it can be shown in so striking an 
instance, that wrong, however carefully concealed, can scarcely hope 
to escape ultimate detection even on earth — and that, though it be 
through chinks and crevices, truth buried, like a plant immured in 
darkness, will grope its way by strange avenues to the light. 



CHAPTER II. 

EEYOLUTION. 

A PASSENGER, miraculously rescued from a late terrible railroad 
accident, describes the scene of unexpected and irremediable ruin by 
saying, that while the train was dashing on in apparent safet}", the car 
in which he was sitting, broke, without visible cause, into a thousand 
fragments, and disappeared, while a motley group of legs and arms 
and heads came flying in the air towards him. He witnessed on a 
small scale what Avas seen in a large one in the disastrous era of the 
Revolution. When all is over we can philosophize upon it, trace 
its causes, remote and immediate, and show how it might have bean 
avoided. But to the majority of its spectators it was as sudden and 
inexplicable, as the death crash of the flying train against the abut- 
ment of the open drawbridge. "A frightful gulf," says a French 



REVOLUTION. 21 

writer, " opens on a sudden beneath the feet of Louis XYI. He is 
irresistibly swallowed up— he, his throne, his power, and his family. 
The effects of the lightning are not more terrible or more swift. 
In an instant all has disappeared, and the affrighted spirit seeks in 
vain some vestige of so many grandeurs." In moments and scenes 
like these, all ordinary calculations are at fault, and facts can alone 
determine what is possible or probable, who shall rise and who shall 
fall, where and in what condition they shall alight. Whatever can 
happen, may happen, and the same apparent freaks of destiny which 
elevated persons from the lowest ranks of society to be generals, 
princes, and monarchs, may as easily cast the descendant of a hun- 
dred kings like sea weed to the remotest shores. 

In reviewing the history of France from the beginning of the 
reign of Louis XVL to the present time, I shall not enter further into 
details than is necessary for the clear presentation of the evidence I 
have to lay before the reader. I aim at no originality either of 
thought or statement, but simply desire to recall, in connection and 
for a definite end, facts well known to every general reader. 

Louis XIII. died in 1643, leaving two sons, Louis XIV. w^ho ascend- 
ed the throne at the age of five years, and Philip Duke of Orleans, 
great-grandfather of Philip Egalite. Under the regency of Anne of 
Austria and the able ministry of Cardinal Mazarin, the power of the 
French Monarchy, and the subjection of the people of France, were 
carried to their greatest extent, and what was wanting was supplied 
under the sovereignty of Louis XIV. and the ministry of Colbert. 
Prerogative was at its height. But so were the glory, power, wealth 
and intellect of France, and in a social atmosphere, impregnated with 
the slavish maxims of a gorgeous superstition, and not yet disturbed, 
though voluptuously illuminated with the nascent brightness of an 
epicurean, philosophy, the gilded yoke of despotism was borne 
proudly by boih nobles and people. 

Bnt the clouds which gathered round the declining years of the 
Grande Monarch, and dimmed the military splendors of the early 
portion of his reign, were fit precursors of the convulsion whose 



22 THE LOST PRINCE. 

elements were fermenting in concealment beneath the corruption, 

infidelity, and intellectual activity of the age. It required the 
regency of Orleans, the impure reign of Louis XV. and the infidel 
intoxication produced by the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau to 
bring the nation to that maturity of evil which issued in the 
French Revolution. Yet never did the French Monarchy seem to 
stand on a firmer basis of national consent and popular favor than 
on the 10th May, 1774-, when the courtiers of France, rushing, with 
"a terrible noise like thunder," from the room wherein lay the dis- 
figured remains of Louis XV. paid their first heartless service to 
Louis XVL and his queen. Dissolved in tears, and on their knees, 
the youthful pair besought of heaven the wisdom and the strength 
they needed. 

In the midst of a licentious court, compared with which the 
seraglio of the sultan is as the purity of heaven, Louis XVI. had 
received a careful education, which gave him the morals of an 
anchorite, the implicit faith of a devotee, the fortitude of a martyr, 
and the bashfulness of a rustic. He would have formed the happi- 
ness of a domestic circle, or been the beau ideal of an English cler- 
gyman — for he had all virtues under heaven but those which he 
most needed, — self-reliance, energy, promptitude, and decision. He 
could be the father of his people — 'he could not be their ruler ; and 
sacrificed the lives of thousands who loved him and deserved his 
love, because unable to speak the kingly word which should crush 
anarchy and punish murder. There was many a crisis in the Revolu- 
tion, when a word, a look, a gesture of the hand, such as duty demands 
from all who govern, would have rolled back the tide of revolt and 
rallied a million swords around the throne. But while he diligently 
educated himself, as the dangers of the social fermentation increased, 
to play, with dignity and self approval, his part in the judgment hall 
and on the scafi'old, he neglected, with a weakness which Christianity 
may pardon, but which Christian wisdom cannot justify, the active 
heroism which makes a great ruler, entrusted with the guardianship 
of social order, as prompt to do as he is ready to sutfer. He was 



REVOLUTION. 23 

but twenty years of age when called to the most arduous political 
position which the world has yet offered to ambition. 

Born on the very day on which the towers and temples of Lisbon 
reeled beneath the throes of an earthquake, which was felt by half 
the world, Providence seemed to afford, at the moment in which 
Marie Antoinette entered on the theatre she was to adorn and 
sadden, some prognostic of the moral and political convulsion in the 
midst of which she was to expire. Possessed of natural abilities, 
in every way answerable to the aerial beauty and queenly majesty 
of her person, her education was deficient in those solid mental 
acquirements which are the chief ornament and safeguard, next to 
moral principle, of a woman in high station. When a child, the 
present Queen of England was seen diligently studying Blackstone. 
Marie Antoinette carried to the court of Versailles an absolute 
ignorance, not of law merely, but of history, A complete fami- 
liarity with Italian, the conversational mastery of French, a little 
music, great skill in needle-work, beauty made perfect by grace, an 
understanding ready to grasp whatever it grappled with, and a tongue 
fluent to express in words most appropriate every varying emotion of 
the soul, childlike simpHcity, a contempt for etiquette, and a love of 
nature, but, above all, a spirit warm, gentle, affectionate, and true, 
form the sum of Avhat she brought to Louis ; enough, indeed, to 
make home happy in private station, or to shine foremost in 
courtly circle, but inadequate to render woman the Mentor of a 
man in times when thrones reel and nations are convulsed. It is 
impossible to read the domestic history of this true hearted 
woman in the pages of a faithful chronicler like Madame Oampan, 
and gaze upon some portrait which truly reflects her image, with- 
out feeling for her, even apart from the mighty griefs and the 
unparalleled tragedy of her closing life, love, pity, admiration, and 
respect, which may teach even republican hearts what loyalty is 
towards an object morally worthy of it. It is the misery of high 
station, that it hides from the multitude all that would most create 
love. It is hardly too much to say, that had even revolutionary 



24 THE LOST PRINCE. 

France known its king and queen, as we now know tliem, the tri- 
bune would have been silent, the tricolor unraised, the Marseillaise 
unsung, and the scaffold unstained. 

Louis Stanislaus, Count de Provence, the eldest brother of the 
king, the Monsieur of the Revolution, had acuter intellect, bolder 
character, more cultivated mind, better knowledge of what is bad 
in men, and greater capacity for governing them than his unfortu- 
nate brother; but his superiority was only in the understanding. 
He was inferior to Louis in religious faith and moral principle. 
In creed a philosopher of the school of Yoltaire, in disposition an 
intriguer, in politics an innovator with an eye to self, he regarded 
himself, even from early life, as the most considerable person, in all 
but the accident of birth, of his family ; and, though not destitute 
of affection for his brother, habitually looked doAvn upon him, and 
loved the flattery which drew a contrast in his favor. Eastern 
despotism may have had its reasons for liking no brother near 
the throne. Height is apt to produce high thoughts, and the 
latitude of future possibilities afford perilous scope for the imagi- 
nation. There is no greater temptation than that which may be, 
but is not. The Count de Provence was among the foremost to 
give the first impulse to the Revolution. His object may be ques- 
tioned — the fact is beyond dispute.* 

The Count D'Artois, afterwards Charles X., though destitute of 
personal daring, had the high bearing and the chivalrio accom- 
plishments which are the pride and ornament of a court; together 
with the mediocral abilities which are moral blessings to a younger 
brother of regal family, in times when circumstances foster ambition 
in the naturally aspiring. There seemed no probability of his ever 
mounting the throne ; his pride was to be what he was, high among 
the highest, enjoying all the pleasures without any of the responsi- 
bilities of royalty. But the tendency of events was to foster a 
prospective ambition for his posterity, which he had too much 

• Alison, Hist. Europe, vol. i. 63. Lamartine, Hist. Rest., vol. I. 254. 



REVOLUTION. 25 

good sense and proper feeling to entertain for himself. His creed 
was what was established — his philosophy courtly conservatism, 
which views the world as a theatre for the privileged classes, and 
the utility of the people as confined to uttering bravos, trimming 
the lights, and paying the orchestra. A beautiful illusion, but des- 
tined to vanish like fairy scenery under the hands of the scene- 
shifter. As the tragic drama of the Ke volution advanced to its 
denoument^ and the political position of Louis XVI. grew hopeless, 
his interests became identified with those of the Count de Pro- 
vence. The brothers were drawn closer together by their mar- 
riage to two daughters of the King of Sardinia ; and as for many 
years it seemed likely that, either from the coldness and indifi'erence 
of the king, or other more insuperable causes, Marie Antoinette 
would have no issue, the hopes of succession appeared to rest with 
the Countess D'Artois, who, in 1V78, had already two children — 
the Due D'Angoul^me and the Due de Berri. But this family 
distinction, diminished at the close of that year, when the queen 
gave birth to a daughter, was entirely done away by the birth of 
the first Dauphin in 1781 — and of the Duke of Normandy in 1785. 

There is a mysterious story* connected with the birth of the first 
Dauphin, which, resting entirely on the authority of Louis XVIII., 
is important in the light of a personal confession, and confirms 
all that history has asserted of his ambition. He states that 
on the evening of the 22d October, 1781, the birthday of the 
prince, on retiring to rest, he found on a table near his bed a let- 
ter addressed, " for Monsieur only." In answer to his inquiries, 
his attendants professed ignorance of the source from whence it 
came, when he directed one of them to open it. When the 
envelope was removed, another was discovered with a similar 
superscription. He then took it into his own hands ; and, as he 
represents, with a presentiment that he was going to read some- 
thing unusual, turned from his attendants, that no one but himself 

* Pilia Dolorosa, p. S. De Quincey'a Autobiographical Sketches, vol. 1. p. 330. 

2 



2€ THE LOST TRINCE. 

might see tlie contents. The second envelope contained a sheet of 
black paper inscribed with white characters. Having dismissed his 
suite, he retired to bed, and by the light of his night lamp read as 
follows : — 

'• Be comforted ; I have just drawn the horoscope of the new-born 
prince ; he will not deprive you of the crown : he will cease to live when 
his father ceases to reign. Another besides yourself will, however, 
succeed to Louis XVI., but you will, nevertheless, be one day king of 
France. He who becomes your successor will be most unfortunate. 
Ptejoice gi-eatly that you are without progeny — the existence of your sons 
would be menaced by too many evils — for your family is destined to drink 
to the very dregs of the bitterest draught contained in the cup of Fate. 

" Adieu, tremble for your life should you seek to know me. 

"I am, Death ! ! !" 

At this period the political atmosphere already began to exhibit 
signs of the approaching storm. To the views of the theorists 
of whom France was full, the American Kevohition had given 
a deceptive impetus ; deceptive, because if ever there were coun- 
tries dissimilar in every particular on which sound calculations of 
political expediency can be based, they were the United States of 
America and the kingdom of France. It was not merely that one 
country was crowded with a dense and fermenting poj^ulation, and 
the other, in its vast outstretched expanse of unreclaimed wilderness, 
afforded ample latitude for the peaceful growth of a mighty people 
for centuries to come, but that the genius, the character, the intel- 
ligence of the two nations placed them mutually in the most 
antipodal position which civilization can allow. In America 
liberty was a principle — in France it was the passionate dream of a 
people constitutionally in love with despotism — in America it was 
but another name for law — in France it meant the disruption of all 
legal restraint. "When America revolted she stood in a conserva- 
tive attitude — pleading precedent, upholding law, protesting 
against innovation ; but France did what no nation can do and 



REVOLUTION. 27 

live — tore herself violently from the past, and disregarded every- 
thing chartered and prescriptive. The nevir country was in truth 
the old — the old country a political infant. Anglo Saxon law, 
reformed religion, English literature, and colonial life repuhlican in 
essence, all combined to make America emphatically the land of 
self-government. In France, superstition dead even to rottenness, 
and giving birth only to the efflorescent but deadly fungi of infi- 
delity, ignorance of law, save that of caste and prerogative, 
and utter incapacity to keep down brute force and the upheavings 
of a physical hell, but by the compulsion -of grape shot, all render- 
ed the establishment of republican freedom as chimerical as the 
return to patriarchal simplicity and nomadic life. Louis and his 
ministers had not discernment to perceive that the era of mere 
rival nationalities was for the present over, and that what might 
have been policy in the reign of Louis XIY., was the height of folly 
in 1777. Chatham could afford to applaud the sturdy colonists, 
for their spirit was the spirit of Englishmen — but Louis brought 
the inflamable mind of France in contact with a flame which burnt 
healthily enough where it was native, and the very vital spirit of 
the body whose iron enginery was of calibre to bear it, but which 
exploded to the four winds of Heaven the rust-eaten constitution 
of an effete despotism. 

The Count de Provence, sitting on nearly the highest step whicli 
led to the throne, had long made himself the centre of theoretic 
schemes of public reformation, the object of which was to ingra- 
tiate himself with the party of movement, increase his own popu- 
larity ; and, in the event of a convulsion, supplant his brother and 
his family.* Louis had begun his reign by a prudent system of 
retrenchments, which if persisted in throughout, might have 
warded off the dangers of revolution until the advent of some less 
cautious monarch ; but war induced expenditure, expenditure reck- 
lessness, recklessness ruin. His brother perceived his difficulties, 

• Lamartine, Hist. Rest., vol. i, p. 253. 



28 THE LOST PRINCE. 

and took advantage of them. He had gone so far as to devise a 
new constitution of which he should be the head. Religious prin- 
ciple could not restrain him, for he had none ; and a creedless man 
has no compass but self-interest. Even natural affection could be 
reconciled by an easy philosophy to the dictates of ambition. 
Believing his brother incompetent for the crisis which he saw 
approaching, and which he did his utmost to hasten, he fraternally 
consulted his happiness, as well as the welfare of the kingdom, in an 
imagined abdication, which should place the crown on his own 
head, and hand over the conduct of the revolution to one capable 
by nerve, and philosophy, and intellect, to control its foi:ce3, and 
reconstruct society in harmony with principles of which Voltaire 
could approve. " He surrounded himself," says an indulgent his- 
torian, " with philosophers, theorists, and censors of government 
and religion. He allowed them to divulge in public his criticisms 
on the ministry, his ideas for reforming the kingdom, his accord- 
ance in heart and soul with the general spirit of the nation, which 
was evincing itself in complaints against the government, and in 
outbursts of enthusiasm, the precursors of revolution. But he 
never permitted these murmurs and this enthusiasm to pass the 
bounds of external respect for religion and the throne. Although 
a sceptic in religion and revolutionary, he regarded the church and 
monarchy as two popular idols, whose divinity might be contested 
without removing their images from before the eyes of the people. 
There was etiquette and ceremony even in his convictions, for he 
believed in the Divine right of established custom ; and all reform 
which extended to Ms own dynasty, appeared to him sacrilegious. 
Ee foresaw a revolution^ and thinking Ms Irotlier unequal to the 
struggle of the times, IteUeded Tiis weakness would drive him 
to abdication ; that the Count D'Artois would lose himself in vain 
resistance to the progress of the Avorld ; and tliat France^ reconsti- 
tuted on a new monarchical 2^lan^ would talce refuge tinder his oicn 
government. He did not conspire to obtain, nor even desire this 
consummation ; but he expected all. Kevertheless, he loved the 



BEVOLUTION. 29 

king — ^his brother — as much as he was ca'pable of lomng any one 
ranking a'bove him^^ 

There is one clause in this passage which contradicts all the rest, 
and which cannot, if the rest be true, be true itself: — "He did not 
conspire to obtain — ^he did not even desire, this consummation." 
He did not openly, it is true, conspire and say to the nation — 
' Dethrone Louis XVI., set aside his descendants — and make me king 
instead ' — for this would have been to defeat his own object, and de 
Provence was too wise, and had too much sense of propriety to act 
thus; but he who could precipitate a revolution, which he foresaw 
must end in the dethronement of the existing monarch, and which 
he imagined would lead to his own elevation ; who placed himself 
knowingly in the path of convulsion, as its termination, and took 
care that his creatures should publish his schemes and principles of 
reform, to the evident prejudice of his brother, and the accelera- 
tion of the crisis which must cause his downfall, did conspire, as 
effectually as a man in his position could conspire, against the 
throne of Louis XVL, and did desire to possess that for which he 
so conspired. He even predicted the king's death.f 

We must judge men in such periods by their actions, and those 
of the Count de Provence neither showed the brother nor the loyal 
subject. It is remarkable how entirely, in his visionary schemes 
for the- future, the right of inheritance, vested by the immemorial 
laws of France in the male descendants of the king, were set aside. 
He did not, according to the plain statement of Lamartine, contem- 
plate merely an abdication and a regency in his person, during the 
minority of the young Prince, but an actual transference of kingly 
power intact to him and his heirs ; in other words, a Provence 
dynasty. And if so, it follows that, ere one single stone was re- 
moved from the ancient structure of the monarchy, the mind of 
the Count de Provence was occupied with the problem of his 
nephew's fate. It was an element in the future which could not 
be overlooked by an acute and circumspect intellect like his. The 

* Lamartine, Hist. Rest. Book x. sec. v. + Lamartine, Girondists, vol i. p. 454. 



30 TUE LOST I'RIXCE. 

incident of the mysterious letter is a proof that it was not. "\Vhen 
the leprous distillment of revolutionary principle liad removevl the 
old Hamlet, there would still remain the young one; and there 
was no widowed majesty of Denmark, hy wedding wliich lie could 
safely permit the scion of an elder house to wander fetterless 
through the land ; and if there had heen, the young man's sword 
might have smelt in due time a rat behind the arras, without there 
being any Polonius for a scapegoat ; or in a domestic feud, as in 
the classic example, both uncle and nephew miglutlose their lives. 

These were contingencies which the Count de Provence could 
not but foresee, for they were all inseparaby included in the idea 
prophetic of a throne. How he purposed to deal with these diffi- 
culties it is not for me to determine. Suffice it to show that they 
must have been before his mind even prior to the outbreak of the 
Kevolution. He may have trusted to accident for some pathway 
out of the labyrinth. He might propose to reconcile all difficulties 
by adopting as his successor one who had legal rights before him ; 
or, education, controlled by him in the principles of his proposed 
philosophic monarchy, might make the facile intellect of youth a 
convert to the laws of his regenerated constitution. This was 
afterwards the republican plan — it may have been that of De 
Provence. But there was a far darker mode of escape from all 
perplexity, which there are strong reasons for supposing he resorted 
to. It was by impeaching the legitimacy of the cliildren of Marie 
Antoinette, for which the long period which elapsed between lier 
marriage with the king and the birth of her first child, together 
with the scandal her enemies had for many years industriously cir- 
culated, afforded some coloring of probability. At tlie meeting 
of the Assembly of Notables in 1787, Monsieur appeared for the 
first time publicly in his character of reformer, and by throwing 
the whole weight of his iniiuence against the aristocracy, and in 
favor of the masses, and proposing sweeping schemes of constitu- 
tional amendment, gained an amount of popularity which for awhile 
intoxicated him, and which he never ceased to strive after by the 



REVOLUTION. 81 

same means, until the revolutionary tide, which he had put in 
motio^n, threatened to sweep him away. 

While he was thus seeking to accomplish two portions of his 
general design, viz. to shake the throne of his brother, and in so 
doing attract the popular favor to himself, atteinpts were made in 
the same Assembly to set aside the royal children, by the introduc- 
tion of documents denying their legitimacy, by the Duke Fitz 
James, of which Monsieur was openly declared to be the author.* 

Letters, said to be written by the Count de Provence to Fitz 
James, have been published. That they express his sentiments 
I have no doubt. As to their authenticity I know nothing. 
Tlie only thing suspicious about them is, that documents so dam- 
natory should ever see the hght. A knowledge of their history 
would however bo requisite to decide this point — for when a letter 
once gets out of a man's hand there is no teUing into whose it may 
fall. [A.] 

But, Monsieur, like all persons endowed with similar powers of 
foresight, read the future only through the medium of his personal 
interests, and imagined that events would take the course which 
he desired. Every one at that time was willing to revolutionize to 
his own level, and vainly imagined that the downward tendency of 
things would be a,rrested just where he stood. A truly honest and 
unselfish mind, wliicli had no bad ambition to gratify, would never 
have been so blinded. 

It is conclusive evidence against the moral integrity of Monsieur, 
that he could weakly dream of a revolution potent enough to com- 
pel abdication on the part of the reigning sovereign, but whose 
waves should subside in admiring murmurs beneath his own feet. 
Such a revolution was the vain chimera of that ambition which 
o'erleaps itself. Monsieur made two miscalculations. He under- 
estimated both his brother's powers of endurance and the intensity 
and scope of the revolutionary forces. 

* Moiuteur, 20 aerminal, year 6. Ireland's France, p. 286. 



82 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Louis Xyi. had the passive heroism of the martyr, if he had not 
the active heroism of the king. The last of his thoughts would 
have been abdication, which should compromise the interests of his 
son. In the midst of his most trying difficulties, the idea that he 
could retire from the contest with his people seems never to have 
crossed his mind. But both he and the queen were almost as 
much disturbed by the fear of royalist movements without the 
kingdom, having for their object the transference of sovereignty 
to some other hand, as they were by the present dangers of an 
insurgent populace. And as for the Eevolution itself, when once 
set in motion it must run its course. It was beyond the control of 
court intrigue. It was a whirlwind which could be ridden on by 
those bold enough to mount it, but which could not be individually 
directed or allayed. 

The States General were summoned to provide means for liqui- 
dating the public debts contracted by the war. They did not even 
consider the question. To relieve the king from his embarrass- 
ment was not their desire. They resolved themselves into a 
single chamber. The Tiers Etats swallowed up the clergy and nobi- 
lity. Individuals hesitated, struggled, and deserted, but the tide of 
innovation swept on without impediment. The National Assem- 
bly, declared permanent, set to work under the inspiration of its 
master-spirit, Mirabeau, to reform the Constitution. The king gave 
in his adherence to the project. He was no longer king. Conces- 
sion only created the appetite for demand. From the senate 
chamber the revolution descended into the streets. There were 
conflicts between the royal troops and the populace. The Bastile 
was besieged and taken. The struggle every day displayed more 
visibly its deadly nature. Too late the high nobility perceived 
their error. In despair they began precipitately to fly from danger 
self-invoked. Emigration disintegrated the vital forces of the 
.nation. 

Foremost among the emigrants, were the Count D'Artois and the 
Prince de Cond6. Monsieur, in no personal danger, remained 



REVOLUTION. 33 

in Paris ; supposing, that thongli the reformation was more radical 
than he had imagined, things were yet taking the course which he 
desired. Like a philosopher, he watched his time, and in loving 
intercourse with the brother whom he imagined himself destined 
to supplant, abided the moment when the pressure of revolution 
should render his throne no longer tenable. D'Artois removed, and 
placed in opposition to the reforming nation, left no alternative in • 
case of regal vacancy but himself. The popularity derived from his 
early advocacy of reform, and his connexion with Mirabeau, still 
continued ; and having the art to remain on good terms alike with 
the king and people, he occupied for a considerable time the very 
position most favorable for the accomplishment of his views. But, 
as months passed on, and though the revolutionary movement con- 
tinued unabated, gathering strength as it proceeded, Louis XVI. 
showed no signs of weakly flinching from personal danger by abdi- 
cation. Monsieur seems to have grown impatient ; and, standing 
between both parties, to have hoped by a coup d)etat to render 
himself master of both. The conspiracy of which the Marquis de 
Favras was the ostensible agent, had for its object no less bold 
and sweeping measures than the destruction of Lafayette, Neckar, 
and Bailley, the abduction of the king to Perone, the proclamation 
of the Count de Provence as Eegent, and the denial of the legiti- 
macy of the Dauphin and Madame Eoyale, on the evidence of the 
documents formerly presented to the Assembly of Notables ; from 
all which, if successful, there would have been but a short cut to 
the actual possession of monarchical power by the Regent.* Now, 
the evidence connecting Monsieur with this conspiracy is all but 
conclusive. In the first place, the Marquis de Favras had been an 
officer in the household of the Count de Provence ; and, as the 
whole scope of the conspiracy was to exalt the latter at the expense 
of the most eminent men in the kingdom, it does not seem in any 



• Moniteur, 20 Grerminal, year 6. Ireland's, France, p. 237. 

Lamartine Hist. Rest., vol. i. p. 255. 



34 THE LOST PRINCE. 

way likely, that a person in the subordinate position of Favras 
would have undertaken a project of such magnitude, without the 
knowledge and consent of the party chiefly interested, and with whom 
he stood at the time, as his agent, in the most intimate relation. 

At the very moment in which Favras was preparing to carry his 
project into execution, he was engaged — on the confessed authority 
of the Count de Provence, for the fact was proved, and could not 
be denied — to negotiate the loan of large sums of money. Favras 
confessed his guilt, but refused to tell the names of his instigators 
and accomplices ; hoping, as it would seem to the last, that those 
who involved him in danger, would do what he felt they had the 
power to do — extricate him from it. But, finding himself disap- 
pointed in his just expectations, he broke out as the guillotine was 
about to descend, in " muttered curses " on some powerful accom- 
plice who had thus left him to perish.* Posterity will incline to 
the belief, that the astute philosopher who had the audacity to 
ask of the tribunal the pardon of Favras, perhaps the better to 
keep him silent, at the very moment that- he denied all knowledge 
of his plot, though he admitted having employed him to negotiate a 
loan, was not as innocent as he asserted, and as the judges, before 
whom he voluntarily went with an imposing retinue, declared him 
to be. 

Lamartine attributes the acquittal of Monsieur at this critical mo- 
ment less to his innocence than to the pride of the people and the 
tribunal, at the unusual spectacle of a prince royal condescending 
to plead his cause before them, and profess his adherence to demo- 
cratic principles. One thing is clear — if history has not the power 
of absolutely condemning him in this affair — she is equally power- 
less to acquit him, for probabilities are all against him. He was 
unprincipled enough for anything, and had only one purpose in 
life — self-aggrandisement. In June, 1791, the royal cause in Franco 
had grown hopeless, and the transfer of authority from one mem- 
ber of the Bourbon family to another, impossible. Monsieur, 

* Lamavtine, Hist. Rest., vol. 1. p. 255. 



REVOLUTION. 35 

therefore, determined on emigration, which afforded the hest 
chance for the accomplishment of his designs. On the night in 
which his brother set out on the fatal journey to Varennes, the 
Count de Provence, leaving his wife to encounter all dangers unpro- 
tected, fled from Paris, joined his mistress, the Countess de Balbi, and 
with her hastened to Coblentz, the head-quarters of the royalists,* 
which thenceforth became the centre of opposition to the authority 
of Louis XVI., as uncompromising as that shown by the repub- 
licans. Deplorable was the position of the king, after his return 
from Varennes. A prisoner in his own palace, insulted and tram- 
pled on by his subjects, he beheld his brothers on a foreign soil 
collecting round them the ancient loyalty and chivalry of the 
kingdom, but, without consulting even his privately expressed 
wishes, or regarding him as still invested with kingly authority. 
The Count D'Artois had attempted to foment an European crusade 
against republican France ; but, though he received promises from 
various courts, no active measures were taken ; and he had 
finally established himself at Cobleutz, to which jjlace the princes 
and nobility of France thronged from all quarters. Even before 
the arrival of the Count de Provence, it had been proposed to 
establish a regency, without the King's consent, in the person of one 
of the emigrant princes ; and this may have accelerated his move- 
ments to prevent the choice falling in his absence on his younger 
brotiier. No sooner had he arrived, than he took on himself the 
control of everything, and established a royal court surpassing in 
magnificence those of the monarchs who visited Coblentz. "With- 
out proclaiming himself Regent he acted as king, distributed 
among the' emigrants, as the true source and fountain of honor, 
crosses and military commissions, borrowed money from all who 
had any, sent letters throughout France to the nobility who yet 
remained, urging emigration, and threatened with forfeiture those 
who hesitated to join his standard ; thus depriving his brother of 

* Laraartine, Hist. Rest., toI. i. p. 259. 



86 THE LOST PRINCE. 

the countenance and presence of all who might aid him, and 
leaving him in helpless solitude among his enemies. But, there 
was no class of men whom he more courted than the. clergy, not 
because he had any respect for religion — for his infidel principles 
are well-known — but because he could use them as instruments.* 
The bait which he held out was the promise of the restoration of 
all confiscated ecclesiastical property. He also established a system 
of agencies throughout the whole of Europe, by means of which 
he had his creatures everywhere ; and, in proportion as the power 
of the king declined at home, his grew abroad, and even spread in 
secret throughout France, and in Paris itself, where he held, or ima- 
gined himself to hold, from a safe distance, communication with the 
revolutionary chiefs, and especially with Robespierre, who, there is 
strong reason to believe, was often his unconscious instrument. 
That he corresponded personally with Robespierre is most certain, 
since the late M. Genet saw a letter written by him to the latter. 
" There is a time," said a writer of the' period, " prescribed by 
experience, when truth must be brought to light upon all occur- 
rences; awaiting which period we can, nevertheless, pronounce 
from proofs collected in various directions, this truth : tliat it was 
from the exterior that Robespierre acted. He was surrounded by 
the agents of Monsieur, wlio successively pointed out to him the 
persons whose remorse of conscience gave that Prince cause of 
fear; those who had penetrated his projects, and such as were not 
favorable to his views." There were many, indeed, in all direc- 
tions, who perceived the tendency which Monsieur was thus giving 
to affairs.! The unfortunate Louis and his queen were tormented 
with apprehensions that their wily brother — whose character they 
well knew — would take advantage of their condition, J to set them 
entirely aside; and the tenor of his communications to them was 
such as to show that he regarded himself as the centre of, all hope 
and power. They were to trust no one in France, but to rely 

• Ireland's France, p. 290. t Lamartine, Girondists, vol. i. p. 194; Ireland, p. 291. 
% Lamartine, Girondists, vol, i. pp. 154, 457. 



REVOLUTION. 37 

implicitly on him, and on the foreign aid which he would bring, 
and hence it was evident that in case of a restoration, as the 
convulsions which had occurred would be attributed to the imbe- 
cility of the king, so the revival of order would be placed to the 
account of his brother, who, with popular consent, might retain 
the throne instead of handing it back to its owner. And many of 
the emigrants themselves, though compelled by circumstances to 
act in concert with Monsieur, yet feared, hated, and mistrusted 
him. They knew him to be undoubtedly ambitious and intensely 
selfish. " The only tMng^'' says Lamartine, "m wMch lie 'profound- 
ly lelieved was himself his llood^ his tradition^ his right^ his neces- 
sity. He adopted everything which could serve himy And if this 
be not the character of a man ripe for all iniquity, I have learnt 
language and read history in vain. 

Biit the interests of the great majority of emigrants — bishops, 
princes, nobility, officers, inferior clergy, philosophers, political 
theorists, and writers — were so clearly bound up with those of the 
Count de Provence, who seemed alone able to conduct the wrecked 
vessel of their fortunes into a safe harbor, that, although there were 
not wanting those who openly accused him as being the author of 
every misfortune, yet the general feeling among them at this period 
was, that the king had proved himself unfit for the crown, that a 
regency vi^as necessary, and that Monsieur was the only person to 
whom the regal authority should be delegated. The idea of per- 
sonal legitimacy was subordinated, among royalists of eminence, to 
that of proved capacity to reign, and they were willing to sacrifice 
the letter of regality, provided they could insure the substance, and 
regain their own footing and prerogative. Monsieur was at this 
time proclaimed Regent, but the project was, through policy, aban- 
doned, and he contented himself, for the present, with exercising 
the power without continuing the name. " Louis XVI.," says 
Lamartine, "disapproved of emigration, and was not without a 
feeling of offence at his brother's intriguing abroad, sometimes in 
his name, but without his wishes. He shrank from the idea of 



38 THE LOST PRINCE. 

passing in the eyes of Europe for a prince in leading-strings^ whose 
amlitious hrothers seized wpon Ms rights in adopting his cause^ and 
stipulated for his interest without his intervention. 

" At Coblentz a regency was openly spoken of, and bestowed upon 
the Count de Provence, and this regency, which had devolved on 
a prince of the blood of emigration, whilst the king maintained a 
struggle at Paris, greatly humiliated Louis XVI. and the queen. 
This usurpation of their rights, although clothed in the dress of 
devotion and tenderness, was even more bitter to them than the 
outrages of the Assembly and the people. We always dread most 
that which is nearest to us, and the triumph of the emigration only 
promised them a throne disputed by the Regent who had restored 
it." 

Until the acceptation of the new constitution, the king continued 
a prisoner of state in the Tuileries, enjoying the mockery of r^pect 
under the control of Lafayette. Barnarve, like Mirabeau at a for- 
mer period, too late endeavored to repair the evils he had done, but 
the clandestine meetings between him and his sovereigns may have 
lent a merciful illusion to the dreary interval. The new constitu- 
tion adopted and sworn to by the king, it seemed for a time as if 
the bottom of the precipice had been safely reached, and the sur- 
render of ancient prerogative might restore the king to the affec- 
tion of his peoi^le. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, 
composed of men ripe in age and competent by experience for the 
task of legislation, without capacity in its members for re-election, 
from which, with Quixotic self-denial, tljey had debarred themselves, 
handed over the task of government, or rather gave the power of 
social demolition, to the Legislative Assembly, who, with the rash- 
ness of youth, and the enthusiasm of theorists, proceeded to undo 
all that their predecessors had, not without wisdom, accomplished. 
Meanwhile the Clubs surpassing the Assembly in audacit}^, and the 
brute masses exceeding the Clubs in violence, ushered in the reign 
of anarchy, until, at length, on the arrival of the ferocious Marseil- 
lais in Paris, on the 30th July, 1792, the hydra of ultra democracy 



CHILDHOOD. 39 

gathered its strength for a last assault on everything which legisla- 
tion had sanctioned, and on the 10th of the following month, the 
painted skeleton of royalty, crumbled, at its first deadly touch, into 
dust. 

Falhng dynasties, to expire with honor, should have heroes at 
their head. Louis should have died in the Tuileries, but in those 
corridors and courtyards the blood of the slaughtered Swiss, loyal 
in vain and martyrs to honor, finds a voice which, but for the sight 
of a mother and her children, would bid us suspend our sympathy 
for the fall of unheroic greatness in the presence of a more costly 
sacrifice. 

The imprisonment of Louis threw all the remains of royal power 
into the hands of his brother. As time advances, and the annals 
and secret underplots of the Revolution are more thoroughly under- 
stood, the character of De Provence will loom up into an evil 
eminence, and History, in her classification of monarchs, will place 
him on the same page which holds John and Eichard of England. 



CHAPTER III. 

CHILDHOOD. 



Louis Chaeles, the second son of Louis XYI. and Marie An- 
toinette, was born at Versailles, March 27, 1785. It had formerly 
been the practice of the French court that the delivery of the 
queen should take place in public, but this needless cruelty had 
been abolished in consequence of the danger incurred at the birth 
of Madame Royale, and only the royal family and the chief offi- 
cers of state were present on the occasion— witnesses enough to 
testify that a prospective heir to the throne had entered the world. 
But alas! how needless the precaution! By a singular fatality, at 
the very moment when the accoucheur proclaimed aloud the birtli 
of the Prince, a crown which ornamented the canopy of the 



40 THE LOST PRINCE. 

queen's bedstead fell suddenly from its place, and rolled shattered 
towards Marie Antoinette. Though little noticed at the time, 
subsequent events caused this incident to be viewed as a vivid 
prognostic of the fate of the French monarchy under him who 
should be inheritor of its phantom royalty and broken crown.* 

The child was baptized the same day by the Cardinal de Eohan. 
Tlie Count de Provence stood godfather and Madame Elizabeth 
was the representative, as sponsor, of the queen of the Two Sicilies. 
He received the title of the Duke of Normandy, was decorated 
with the insignia of the order of the Holy Ghost, and fireworks, 
illuminations, popular acclamations, and royal bounties testified the 
national joy. 

The republican element was already fermenting, and, nine days 
after the birth of the child, a paper was read, before the royal acad- 
emy in Paris, advocating the novel idea that the title to the throne 
rested on the will of the people. On the 24:th May, Marie Antoi- 
nette returned public thanks to God for her safe delivery. The next 
year was signalized by the journey to Cherbourg. Tl*e infant duke 
accompanied his father, and shared with him the popular acclama- 
tions which hailed his progress through his dominions, and espe- 
cially through the province from which he took his title. " Come, 
my little Normandy," exclaimed the enraptured king, " thy name 
brings happiness."! 

Amid the increasing difficulties of the kingdom, two years of 
domestic felicity succeeded — when, in the year 1788, the infant 
princess Sophie died, a calamity which the queen always looked 
upon as the first drop of the thunder shower. The opening of the 
States General took place — and, on the eve of fresh domestic sor- 
row, and yet darker political troubles, superstition, by strange 
coincidence, contributed to cast its cloud over the future. Four 
wax candles were burning on the toilette table of the queen as she 
was sitting one evening, towards the end of May, conversing with 

* Meraoira of the Duchess D'Angouleme, p. 10. t Beauchesne, vol. I. p. 21. 



CHILDHOOD. 41 

her ladies respecting the incidents of the day, and indulging in 
mournful prognostications, when in succession the lights began of 
themselves to go out. When the third was extinguished "Misfor- 
tune," said the queen, "has the power to make us superstitious; 
if the fourth taper go out like the rest, nothing can prevent my 
looking upon it as a fatal omen." It went out — and though simple 
natural causes were suggested to the queen, the unusual incident 
rested on her spirits. 

The Dauphin had for a long time been in a rickety and scrofulous 
condition. Public opinion, always unjust to Marie Antoinette, 
attributed the maternal affection with which she kept the child 
from injurious indulgences and amusements, to superior affection 
for the robust, healthy and lovely little Duke of Normandy. On 
the 4:th June, 1789, the young prince died at Meudon, only too 
happy to escape thus early the troubles of his family. The death of 
the child was however made an occasion by the Tiers Etats for 
exhibiting their disrespect for the king, and their growing encroach- 
ments on the royal prerogative. The President of the Assembly 
intruded almost forcibly into the apartment where the king was 
weeping over the remains, to ascertain the Prince's death, " Are 
there no parents in the Tiers Etats?" said the indignant king. 
The anxiety of the Assembly on this occasion strangely contrasts 
with the apathy of the Convention in 1795, when informed of the 
asserted death of the succeeding Dauphin. This child, now in the 
fourth year of his age, was too young to have much sense of the 
calamities which crowded on his parents — and, together with the 
apparent title to a succession he was destined never to enjoy, was 
made, by the death of his brother, the owner of a little pet dog 
called Moufflet. The Bastile fell on the 14th June. On the succeed- 
ing day the Dauphin made his first appearance, amid the stormy 
scenes of the Revolution, in the balcony of the courtyard of Ver- 
sailles, where the queen presented him to the people in her arms in 

» Campan, vol. ii. p. 3T. 



42 THE LOST PRINCE. 

obedience to the popular clamor, and in the hope to still the tem- 
pest of democracy by the presence of childhood. Vain hope! 
"Here is that throne," said one of the creatures of the Due 
d'Orleans, as he looked up into the state room of the castle — " Here 
is that throne, the vestiges of which will soon be sought in vain." 

The personal appearance of the young Prince at this time is 
described by historians as of the most captivating character — and 
in the pictures taken of him after his imprisonment in the Temple, 
when confinement and disease had produced their terrible ravages 
on his constitution and intellect, it is not easy to trace the infan- 
tine beauty he possessed, when as yet the personal attractions, 
derived from the combined blood of many kingly races, had only 
been fostered by association since infancy with the most refined 
court in Europe, and all the ease and splendor of Yersailles. It 
must, indeed, have been an incomprehensible scene to the child as 
for the fi]'st time he gazed upon the demoniac heavings of the wild 
tempest of democracy, and felt — but knew not why — that those 
he most loved, and of whom he knew nothing but what could 
awaken love, were the objects on Avhom fell its concentrated 
rage. 

His blonde flowing hair, fair open physiognomy, full of sense and 
innocence, and finely-proportioned form, gave promise of both 
beauty and vigor. One feature I must not overlook. There is a 
marked discrepancy between the color of his eyes as described by 
many historians, and as represented in the pictures which have 
come down to us. The first say they were of a brilliant blue — 
whereas the latter, the most trustworthy witnesses, especially where 
the artist is of the literal and unimaginative school, show them 
to have been of a clear hazel — tinted perhaps slightly at the edges 
with a bluish coloring, but having nothing of the deep clear azure 
which enhance the aerial beauty of Marie Antoinette by recalling 
the hues of a southern sky. How far confinement and disease* may 

* Beauchesne, vol, ii. p. 252. 



CHILDHOOD. 43 

have contributed to modify the color of the eyes, is a question for 
physicians to determine. 

If the sayings and doings of most children in cultivated ranks of 
society were carefully recorded, they w^uld, I suppose, present about 
the same level of intellect. Those which are handed down concern- 
ing the Dauphin are in no way remarkable. Their interest consists 
in the picture they present of the opening aspect of a life so soon 
to be obscured by clouds. The queen was in the habit of playing 
little airs upon the harp or guitar, as he lay amid the happy group 
at evening by her side, and, on one occasion, she accompanied the 
music with the words — 

" Sleep, my child, and clobe thine eyelids, 
Por thy cries disturb my heart, 
Sleep, my child, for thy poor mother 
Feels affliction's keenest dart." 

At the words, "thy poor mother," and the allusion to sorrow, he 
seemed touched ; and, reclining on the couch, gazed silently and 
intently on the queen. Madame Elizabeth, misled by his silence, 
cried out, " the best of it is, that Charles is sleeping." 

" Ah, my dear aunt," was the reply, " how can I sleep when 
listening to Mama Eeine ?"* 

What a contrast between the peaceful evenings at St. Cloud and 
the long, dark nights of solitude and affliction in the Temple. 

There is more point in another anecdote. One day, in the garden 
at Bagatelle, he threw himself, with the waywardness of a child, 
into the midst of a rose-bush, and, on an attendant warning him of 
the danger he ran of tearing out his eyes, he exclaimed, " thorny 
paths lead to glory !" 

"My child," said the queen, when she heard his reply, "the 
maxim you have cited is true, but your application of it is not 
just. There is no glory in tearing your eyes out. "Were you to 

* Beauchesne, vol. i. p. 26. 



44 THE LOST PRINCE. 

expose yourself to destroy some pernicious animal, or protect some 
fellow creature from danger, that might be called glory. But, before 
you again speak of glory, wait till you have read the histories of Du 
Guesclin, Bayard, and Turerlne, who shed their blood for France." 

Blushing for his folly, he kissed her hand, and said, "Dear 
mamma, it shall be my glory to obey you."* 

On another occasion, having hidden a flute belonging to one 
of the pages in a chink in the terrace, the queen, to punish him, 
confined his dog, Moufflet, as his accomplice. Distressed by the 
cries of the animal, he implored his release. " It is not MoufHet 
who did it. It is not Mouflflet who should suffer." At his own 
request he was confined and the dog liberated ; and, when again set 
free, immediately restored the flute with apologies to the owner. 

The following incident occurred after the flight to Yarennes, but 
may be mentioned here. Before going to his little garden at the 
Tuileries, he exercised himself in the management of a light gun. 
At the moment of departure, the oflacer of the ITational Guard on 
service said to him, " Monsiegneur, before you go out give up your 
gun." He stoutly refused, and on being reproved by his governess, 
replied, " If monsieur had asked me to give him my gun, it would 
have been well. But, he said, give it up." " Always quick and 
blunt," said the king — " but I am glad to perceive that he knows the 
value of words and feels the propriety of terms."t 

These anecdotes may serve to give some idea of the natural dis- 
position of the child during his happiest days, and show a charac- 
ter which, under proper culture, promised to manifest the best 
fruits. He appears to have been aflfectionate, thoughtful, bold, and 
endowed with a quick sense of his own rights, and what j ustice 
demanded in respect of others. 

His chief employment, during his brief space of happiness at Ver- 
sailles, was in the cultivation of his flower garden, that he might 
be able to present bouquets to " Mama Eeine." But the time had 

♦ Beauchesne, vol. i. p, 29. t Beauchesne, vol. i. p. 60. 



. CHILDHOOD. 45 

arrived when these delights of childhood were to be surrendered. 
The 2d Oct., 17S9, is memorable for the entertainment impru- 
dently given to the body-guard at Versailles. The heart-intoxica- 
tion of the royalist chivalry vv^as at its height, and the Dauphin as 
he entered the festal chamber, holding his mother's hand, was greet- 
ed with the wildest acclamations of delight — and there can be no bet- 
ter proof of the insane joy of the assembled soldiers, than the suicide 
of one of the body-guard out of remorse for previous feelings of dis- 
loyalty. 

A different scene did the Chateau of Versailles present to the 
eyes of the child, who must have been bewildered by these inex- 
plicable changes, when the brute rabble assailed the ancient dwelling 
of their kings, and his mother narrowly escaped the knives plunged 
into her just vacated bed. Then came the hideous journey to Paris 
amid troops and sans-culottes, and women, and cannon, and dust, 
and blood, and gory heads, and curses, and insults. The Tuileries 
had been uninhabited for more than a century, and presented a 
desolate and dismantled appearance to the Prince, accustomed to 
the freshness and splendor of Versailles. " How ugly everything 
is here, mamma," he said, as they entered. To which the afflicted 
mother replied — " Louis XIV. lodged here, my son, and was well 
satisfied. "We should not be more difficult to accommodate than he." 

Notwithstanding the rapid increase of political troubles, the 
king and queen were diligent in the oversight of their children's 
education — and the Dauphin, by this time, had made considerable 
progress in his studies. He was still under the care of a governess 
— but the Abbe Davaux, of whom he was very fond, acted as his 
private tutor. No sooner were they settled in their new abode, 
than the routine of careful study w-as recommenced, and the marks 
of thought and proficiency exhibited by the Prince, afforded his 
parents some consolation under the pressure of political troubles. 
The day after the arrival in Paris, hearing a noise in the court- 
yard—and, afraid of another popular outbreak— he exclaimed, 
" Good God, mamma, has yesterday come again ?" 



46 THE LOST PRINCE. 

A few days after, his father, perceiving that he looked very 
thoughtful, inquired what occupied him? — on which he asked, in a 
serious and affectionate manner, why the people of France, who 
formerly loved him so well, were now so exasperated against him ? 
The reply of the king is memorable, affording a happy instance of 
the manner in which the most complicated events can be conveyed 
to childish apprehension, and also exhibiting the simple view 
which the king himself took of the Eevolution. " I wished, my 
child, to render the people still happier than they , were. I wanted 
money to pay the expenses occasioned by wars. I asked my people 
for money, as my predecessors had always done. Magistrates com- 
posing the parliament opposed it, and said that the people alone 
had a right to consent to it. I assembled the principal inhabitants of 
every town, whether distinguished by birth, talents, or fortune, at 
Versailles. That is what is called the States General. "When they 
were assembled, they required concessions of me, which I could not 
make, either with due respect for myself, or with justice to you, 
who will be my successor. Wicked men, inducing the people to 
rise, have occasioned the excesses of the last few days. The peo- 
ple must not be blamed for them."* He was easily made to see the 
necessity of showing an obliging spirit to all the public oflacers 
with whom he came in contact, and after conversing with any of 
them, would say to his mother, " Was that right?" 

The people in general — and even the members of the Assembly — 
entertained respect and love for the child, the danger and diJB- 
culties of whose position none could fail to perceive, and few could 
refrain from pitying. Never were the popular acclamations, during 
temporary lulls in the tempest, more heartfelt and sincere, than 
when the royal parents presented themselves in company with their 
child. Then, whether in the presence of the Assembly or the 
mob, the air was rent with the cries of "Vive le Roi ! — Vive la 
Keine! — Vive M. le Dauphin!" O, France! France! thou art a 

* Campan, vol. U. p. T2. 



CHILDHOOD. 47 

strange land — variable as the sky or sea, and presenting some fea- 
tures of the angel when most the demon. 

Deprived of his I'ecreatiou in the spacious gardens of Versailles, 
he had given to him as a substitute a little spot of ground near the 
Tuileries. "It is this same garden," sajs Beauchesne, "changed, 
renewed, enlarged, that at a later period Napoleon consecrated to 
the King of Rome, Charles X. to the Duke of Bordeaux, and Louis 
Philippe to the Count de Paris. How many thoughts are awakened 
by this little spot of ground, so soon abandoned by its young pro- 
prietors." There is indeed a melancholy interest attached to it. 
Here the Dauphin amused himself with raising flowers to present as 
of old to his mother — and as, in his visits to the garden he was 
usually accompanied by a detachment of the National Guard, he 
himself assumed their uniform. It was this which probably led to 
the formation of a little regiment of boys, which gloried in the title 
of the " Royal Dauphin," of which the Prince was appointed hono- 
rary colonel. The design of the king in giving his consent to 
this scheme, was to take advantage of the popular feeling in favor 
of the, Dauphin, and in this he for a time succeeded. 

"The Royal Dauphin" became a general favorite. Recruits 
were readily obtained, and after a few weeks' drilling, they took 
their place among the troops of the line and acquired a semi-poli- 
tical importance. Parisian wit indeed not inappropriately dubbed 
it " The Royal Bonbon " — but it survived the satire — though at 
length disbanded on account of difficulties which arose from the 
formation of similar corps leading to jealousies, conflicts, duels and 
wounds — until parents protested against so serious an amuse- 
ment, and "The Royal Dauphin" was seen no more — having how- 
ever taken part in the funeral solemnities of Mirabeau and joined 
with its little tambourins in beating the " generale."* 

The year 1790 was spent by the royal family between the 
Tuileries and the palace at St. Cloud— and during this period of 

Beauchesne, vol, i, p. 64 



48 THE LOST PRINCE. 

domestic quiet the advancement of the Dauphin was rapid in hia 
different branches of study, and the healthfulness of his constitu- 
tion, and the robustness of his form, were daily on the iocrease. 
He presented no sign of the scrofulous disease of which his brother 
had died, and never at any period had more than an incipient 
tendency to it. 

The next important incident in his life was the flight to Yaren- 
nes on the 21st June, 1791. For many months projects of escape 
had been agitated among the royal family and their friends, but in 
agreement with the fatality and fatuity which seemed to attend all 
their plans, the favorable period of escape was allowed to pass, and 
the time chosen when all France was alive with suspicion. 

Let us look at this event in the point of view in which it appeared 
to the Dauphin himself. Roused out of sleep in the middle of the 
night, he found himself dressed in girl's clothes — and all the family 
were in some masquerade disguise. " What do you think of all 
this ?" said his sister as she equipped him. " I suppose we are 
all going to the theatre." — He was carried down a secret stairway 
into the street. It was midnight. The party separated into twos 
and threes. He was put into a carriage, and fell asleep amid the 
mutual congratulations of the family. The morning broke, the 
weather was fine, the country lovely, and all the party in good 
spirits. The comedy was complete. The king was a valet, the 
queen a governess, and the Dauphin transformed into the daughter 
of the Baroness de Koff^, and rejoiced in the name of Aglas. 

But it was again night, and there was difficulty and danger. 
They had lost their way. They descended from the carriage and 
wandered about by the light of a lantern — returned to the vehicle, 
drove on, wei^e stopped, questioned, forced to alight — then there 
were crowds, confusion, altercation and dismay, in the midst of 
which the poor child dropped asleep la a strange dark room. 
When he again awoke his sister said to him, " 0, Charles-^you have 
deceived yourself — this is no comedy !" *'I have seen that for a 
long time," he replied. 



CHILDHOOD. 49 

Again he was in a carriage, and two strange gentlemen were added 
to the company. One was kind and polite, and protected them 
from insult and abuse, and the child in gratitude clambered upon 
his knees. — He was once more in Paris, in his old apartment in 
the Tuileries — And such, to the Dauphin, was the flight to, and 
return from, Yarennes. Merciful ignorance of reality, which hides 
from childhood the calamities of life. Worth a thousand pages of 
philosophising is the following from Bertrand de Molleville, relative 
to a period not long posterior to this ; — 

" While the queen, spoke to me, the little Dauphin, beautiful as an 
angel, amused himself with singing and dancing in the apartment, with a 
little sabre of wood and a buckler, which he held on his arm. They came 
to call him to supper, and in two bounds he was at the door. 

" ' My son,' said the queen, ' do you go out without bowing to M. Ber- 
trand ?' 

" ' 0, mamma,' said the child, continuing to dance, ' M. Bertrand is 
one of our best friends, good evening, M. Bertrand,' and he sprang out of 
the apartment. 

" 'Is he not handsome ?' said the queen, when he had gone out. 

" ' He is very happy,' I added, 'to be so young. He feels none of our 
sorrows, and his happiness does us good." ' 

During the fourteen months which intervened between the 
return from Varennes and the final catastrophe at the Tuileries, 
there is little particularly deserving of record in this brilliant but 
hapless childhood. When the mob defiled through the palace on 
the 20th June, the Prince, seated on a table in front of his mother, 
and half smothered with a red cap, served, as a safeguard for her in 
the perils of the hour. 

But, with the exception of such occasional inconveniences, whilst 
the faintest shadow of royalty remained, it was to the children of 
the king as if his power stood on a base like the Pyramids. Shel- 
tered from the mental anxiety which wrupg the hearts of liis 
parents, and which in one hour at Yarennes had bleached the hair 
of Marie Antoinette into the whiteness of snow, the Prince conti- 

8 



50 THE LOST PRINCE. 

nued to enjoy all the happiness which his ago permitted, and to 
develope alike in strength and mental activity. Under the care of 
the Abbe Davaux he made great progress, and wrote a good hand. 
The life he led was calculated to expand his faculties, and impart 
an unusual facility of acquirement. One example of depth of thought 
remarkable in a child will serve to close the record of his happiest 
days. While reading in the fifth book of Telemachus, the questions 
proposed by the Cretans to the candidates for the throne, when 
electing a king, he came to the second question, "Who is the 
most unfortunate of men?" "Let me," he said, "reply to this 
question, as if I were Telemachus. The most unhappy of men 
is a king who has the misfortune to see that his subjects do not 
obey his laws." 

The 10th of August came at last, and all was dismay and anguish 
in the Tuileries. The Prince, in company with the king, queen, 
Madame Elizabeth, and his sister, passed through the ranks of the 
National Guard, and then the whole party returned into the palace, 
where the chambers were filled with military, and looked from the 
windows upon the mingled throng of soldiers and people in the 
gardens and streets below. Then there was confusion and alarm, 
women hurrying hither and thither in helpless dismay — sounds of 
conflict, rage, despair, in the midst of which the Prince was led by 
his parents, through the ranks of the grenadiers, into the chamber 
of the Assembly. He was no longer heir to a throne. The next 
change was to a little green-papered cell in the monastery of the 
Feuillans, where the royal family awaited transmission to their 
memorable prison with which we are chiefly concerned — the 
Temple. 



THE ORPHANS, 5 J 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE OEPHANS. 



On the 10th August, 1792, the king and royal family took refuge 
from the violence of the mob in the chamber of the l^Tational 
Assembly. They were placed in the reporters' box — a small enclo- 
sure, exposed to the burning heat of the sun. During the exciting 
sitting they remained without refreshment, while the work of car- 
nage went on without. The Dauphin fell asleep on his mother's 
lap. Late in the night they were transferred to the monastery of 
the Feuillans. Destitute of everything, linen was supplied to them 
by their friends — and the wife of the English ambassador. Lady 
Gower Sutherland — sent, for the use of the Dauphin, the clothes 
of her son, who was a child of about the same age. They conti- 
nued at the monastery until 13th August, when, by the order of the 
Commune, they were transferred to the Temple. They were at 
first taken to the portion of it called the palace, formerly inhabit- 
ed by the Count D'Artois. At night they were transferred to 
ikQir final prison in the Tower. " Your master," said a municipal 
ofiicer to one of the king's attendants, " was used to guilt ceilings — 
he shall now see how the assassins of the people are lodged." 

The following brief outline of the imprisonment of the royal 
family divides itself into three parts : 

1. From 13th August, 1792, to the execution of Louis XVL, on 
21st January, 1793. 

2. From thence to the execution of Marie Antoinette, October 
16, 1793. - 

3. From the death of the queen to June 8, 1795, when the 
Dauphin disappeared from the Tower, and was asserted to have 
died. 

The present chapter will contain a brief examination of the first 



52 THE LOST PRINCE. 

two periods, in which I shall confine myself to those points which 
enter into the general argument. 

The Tower of the Temple — one of the most ancient and remark- 
able buildings in Paris — was erected by the Knights Templar, 
about the year 1200, and was designed as the treasury and arsenal 
of the order. It consisted of a massive square tower one hundred 
and fifty feet high, the walls of which were more than nine feet 
thick. It was flanked at the angles by four circular turrets, and 
had on the north side a small stone building-^attached to it, 
but without internal communication — called the little tower, 
naving similar turrets of lesser dimensions at the angles — while the 
whole series of compacted structures were crowned with conical 
caps, and presented an appearance of stern gloomy strength in 
keeping with the men and times that reared them. 

This building had been the theatre of much of the heroism, 
crime, magnificence, luxury, and tragic suffering which are blended 
in the history of the priestly knights of Jerusalem. It was now 
dismantled and desolate, and converted into the sepulchre of a 
dynasty. During the repair of the principal tower, the royal 
family were temporarily placed in the little tower — the queen and 
ladies occupying the second story, and the king and his attendants 
the third.* 

The fall from the height of royalty had been sudden and terrible. 
But it found the king, formed by nature and' education to act 
the martyr, prepared to meet it with calmness and dignity. He 
experienced some little regret at having made no effort to suppress 
the insurrection, but solaced himself with the thought that he was 
not responsible for the blood that had been shed. He knew there 
was now no escape from death. The policy pursued by the Count 
de Provence had left him alone in the midst of his enemies. The 
royalists were all gathered round his brother at Coblentz. From 
the moment of entering the Temple, he began his preparation for 



Clery, 



THE ORPHANS. 53 

death. The name of Charles I. was frequently on his lips. There 
was providentially a library of some fifteen hundred volumes 
in the tower, which formed a solace for his captivity, but he kept 
his eye chiefly on the record of the sufferings of the martyr 
king. 

The queen, but for her children, would, without a sigh, have 
died in the Tuileries. She likewise was well aware that death 
awaited her, and, though hope might occasionally revive, looked 
steadily to this as the consummation. 

The fate of their children after their own decease, must have 
both occupied the thoughts of the unfortunate pair and form- 
ed the subject of conversation between them. The Dauphin was 
necessarily the chief object of their anxiety. Madame Roy ale was 
shielded by her sex and the salique law. The king did not for a 
moment contemplate the forfeiture of his son's right to the throne. 
To the last he aimed at transmitting the princely inheritance 
to him with all its dangers, and trained his mind for this end, look- 
ing forward to the hour when France would right itself. 

It is remarkable that, on the 10th August, he did not adopt so 
obvious an expedient for personal escape as abdication. Had ho 
retired into private station, even at that late hour, he might have 
been saved. But he could not do this without sacrificing the 
future interests of his son. The nation Avould have required of him 
a dynastic surrender — and, on the other hand, the effect of abdica- 
tion would have been to throw all power into the hands of his 
brother, whose ambition he well knew, and whose designs he dis- 
trusted. He chose rather to run all hazards, and permit power to 
be wrested from him with life, than to jeopard the succession of his 
Bon. 

Freed from the cares of government, he applied himself reli- 
giously to the task of educating his child. From the moment the 
royal family entered the Temple, a routine of life was established, 
which, occasionally interrupted by sickness or unusual calamity, 
continued to be observed while they remained together. Particu- 



64 THE LOST PRINCE. 

lar seasons were set apart for devotion, study, rest, and recreation. 
From ten till one was given by the king and queen to the educa- 
tion of their children. The Dauphin possessed intelligence preco- 
ciously developed, great facility of acquisition, and a remarkably 
retentive memory. History and geography formed his principal 
studies — and the latter was taught him according to the new divi- 
sion of France. In the evening, the instruction of the Dauphin was 
continued. 

The massacres of September broke in upon their calm and not 
unhappy life, but the usual routine was soon resumed. At the 
latter end of that month they were removed to the great tower, 
and as this was the scene of the Dauphin's long confinement, we 
must enter into the details of the arrangements. 

The enormous and massive pile was divided into four stories, 
having a large central pillar mounting as high as the floor of the 
fourth story, which rested on its supreme capital. The walls were 
between nine and ten feet thick, and the space which they enclosed 
nearly thirty-six feet square. The ground floor presented bare 
walls, and was devoid of all ornament, except the elegant carving 
of the capital, arches, and columns. It was devoted — together 
with the apartments in three of the turrets — to the municipal oflS- 
cers on service in the Temple. 

In the fourth turret was a spiral staircase, which ran uninterrupt- 
edly to the top of the building — and, at each of the landings, were 
two doors, one of oak and one of iron. The relative position of this 
staircase and the different suites of apartments must be borne in 
mind, as it shows how communication could be held with the 
upper stories without the knowledge or suspicion of persons occu- 
pying the other chambers. The first story resembled the ground 
floor, and was occupied by the guard, who stacked their arms 
around the central column. Provided the sentry was gained over, 
any changes could be effected by the municipal oflBcers without the 
knowledge of the soldiers, when confined within the massive 
walls of the guard-room. The second story was divided into four 



THE ORPHANS. 65 

chambers, and was devoted to the king, the Dauphin, and their 
attendants. The apartments were warmed in winter by a central 
stove. 

In the third story, similarly divided, resided the queen, and the 
other female members of her household. The fourth story, 
destitute of the pillar which ran through all the others, presented 
a vast open hall, and was used, together with the gallery opening 
from it, and running round the exterior of the building, for exercise 
— although the spaces in the battlements were filled up with close 
lattice- work, to prevent any communication by signals between the 
captives and persons outside. 

During all the trials to which the royal family had for years been 
subjected, the health of the Dauphin had remained unimpaired, 
and at the time of going to the Temple he was in the very 
height of his beauty, strength, and elastic vigor. But long con- 
fiaement, notwithstanding all the precautions taken by his parents 
to keep him in exercise, began now sensibly to wear upon hia 
spirits. 

In the beginning of December it was determined to bring the 
king to trial — but as yet the royal family were kept in suspense 
concerning the time and method of proceeding. With a patient 
heroism above praise, they continued to the last the routine which 
they had established at the beginning of their captivity. On the 
11th, the king and Dauphin went as usual at nine o'clock to break- 
fast with the queen, and though various indications showed that a 
crisis was approaching, Louis, with calm demeanor, retired with his 
son to his apartment. They amused themselves for awhile with a 
game of chance. The number sixteen was invariably unfortunate 
with the Dauphin. "I cannot" he exclaimed, "get beyond sixteen."* 
The coincidence seemed sensibly to affect the king. He was hear- 
ing him read when the commissioners entered to take the boy away. 
Loais tenderly embraced him and they parted. The child had 



Clerj. 



56 THE LOST PRINCE. 

repeated the last lesson to the father. Cut to the heart, the 
unfortunate man continued for half an hour leaning his head on his 
hand in speechless dejection. 

At one o'clock on the same day he was brought to trial at the 
bar of the Convention. Into the particulars of this long and 
memorable process, the end of which was determined from the 
beginning, I will not enter. For the second time in history a sove- 
reign stood for judgment at the bar of his people. The most inno- 
cent of rulers was offered as a sacrifice for the sins of generations. 
The trial was still in progress, on Christmas day, when Louis shut 
himself up in his cabinet, and wrote his will. It is a document 
which must claim a place even in this brief summary, for it affords 
evidence of the mind of the king, in reference to his brothers, than 
which no direct accusation could speak more eloquently at the 
bar of posterity. 

I give it for brevity's sake in the abridged shape in which it 
appears in the pages of Lamartine — nothing being omitted but 
some unimportant formalities of expression. It ran thus : 

" I, Louis, XVI. of that name, king of France, confined for four months 
with my family in the tower of the Temple, at Paris, by those who were 
ray subjects, and deprived during eleven days, of all communication with 
even my family, and moreover implicated in a trial, the issue of which it 
is impossible to foresee, on account of the passions of men, having no one 
save God as a witness of my thoughts, or to whom I can address myself — 
declare here in His presence my last wishes and sentiments. I bequeath 
my soul to God my Creator, and pray He may receive it into His mercy for 
Christ's sake. I die in the faith of the Church, and obedience to its deci- 
sions. I pray God to forgive me all my sins. I have striven to remember 
and detest them, and to humble myself before Him. I beg all those whom 
I have involuntarily injured (for I do not remember ever having wilfully 
injured any one) to forgive me the evil they believe I have done them. I 
request all men who have any charity, to xmite their prayers to mine. I 
pardon, from the bottom of my heart, all those who have become my ene- 
mies without my ever giving them any motive, and I pray God to pardon 



THE ORPHANS. 57 

them, as well as those who. from a false or mistaken zeal, have done me 
much harm I recommend to God my wife and children, my brothers, and 
all those attached to me by ties of blood, or any other manner. I pray 
God to look with compassion on my wife, children, and sister, who for a 
long time have suffered with me, and to support them if they lose me, and 
so long as they remain in this world. I recommend my children to my 
wife, whose affection for them I have never doubted. I also pray her to 
teach them to look upon the grandeurs of the world, if they should be con- 
demned to suffer them, only as dangerous and temporary possessions, and 
to turn their thoughts to the only real and durable glories of eternity. I 
pray my sister to continue to show the same tenderness to my children, 
and to replace their mother should they have the misfortune to lose her. 
I pray my wife to forgive me all the misfortunes she suffers on rny account, 
and the sorrow I may have caused her in the course of my life, as she may 
be certain that I forgive her all, if she fancied she had anything where- 
with to reproach herself. I recommend my children, after their duty to 
God — which is before all, to remain always united among themselves, to 
obey their mother, grateful for all the care she has taken of them, and in 
memory of myself. I pray them to look upon my sister as a second 
mother. I recommend my son, if he has the misfortune to become king, to 
remember that he owes himself to the happiness of his fellow citizens, to 
forget all hatred and resentment, and especially that which relates to the 
misfortunes and sorrows I now undergo. Let him remember that he can 
only make his subjects happy by reigning according to the laws — but that 
a king can only cause the laws to be respected, and do all the good he 
wishes, so long as he possesses the necessary power ; but that when the 
contrary occurs, being thwarted in his actions, and inspiring no respect, he 
is more injurious than useful. I conclude by declaring before God, and 
ready to appear in His presence, that I am innocent of all the crimes laid 
to my charge. 

" Written in duplicate at the Tower of the Temple. December, 25th, 
1752. - ' -Louis." 

At the moment the king penned this sublime and touching 
testament, the Count de Provence and the Count D'Artois at the 
head of their respective courts, were maintaining the splendor 

3* 



58 THE LOST PRINCE. 

and exercising the functions of royalty among their adherents. In 
appearance, as well as by the ties of blood, they were the props on 
which the youthful Prince would seem compelled to lean. But 
though the king includes his brothers in the general prayer for all 
those united to him by kindred, or in any other way, he pointedly 
omits their names from all those portions of his will where it would 
have been natural to mention them. At the beginning of the 
document he shows, by retaining the title of Louis XVI., that he 
has not relinquished his own claim to the throne.' But instead of 
commending his son to the care of his uncles, as guardians of his 
rights, he pointedly passes them by, and entrusts him solely to the 
imprisoned queen, assigning emphatically as a reason, that he had 
never doubted her affection — and in case of the queen's death, he 
commits the guardianship of his children to his sister. But there 
is no intimation that in any event he expects anything from his 
brothers. 

So marked an omission, under such circumstances, cannot be 
explained on any probable ground but this, that he distrusted 
them, and knew, from past experience, that their efforts, for the res- 
toration of monarchy in France, were designed for their own bene- 
fit, and not for that of him and his family He had no confidence 
that they would respect the rights of his child, and therefore com- 
mitted him to the care of two feeble, imprisoned women. The 
substitution of the Princess Elizabeth as guardian for his son in case 
of the queen's death, is most marked and emphatic. 

The last days of Louis XVI. have been chronicled by the ablest 
pens of France and England. It does not enter into the scope of 
ray design to speak of them in detail. The historic drama is one 
which holds us breathless though read a hundred times. We know 
full well the tragic truth — yet scarcely can we refrain indulging a 
fleeting hope as we mingle in fancy with the pale and weeping 
group in the Temple — or picture the majestic martyr nightly con- 
ferring with his heroic counsel, or exchanging, with the fondness 
of a lover, clandestine letters with those whom he is only to meet 



THE ORPHANS. 69 

once more before the long, long parting of death. We can sympa- 
thize with the emotions in the chamber where the dread struggle 
is going on — we can enter into the deep scorn of Robespierre as 
Verniaud belies by his vote the eloquence still reverberating in the 
air, and hear him hiss to his neighbor, " These are your orators " — 
or feel the dead chill silence, of horror and disgust, as Phillip of 
Oi'leans gives his voice for death. 

But the saddest and the most heart-rending scene of all is that 
with which the painter's art has made us most familiar — the sepa- 
ration of the dying king and his family. And this, too, was the 
first deep sorrow of the Dauphin's life. Children do not grieve at 
the exchange from palaces to poverty. His health might suffer 
from confinement, but the happiest place on earth for him was the 
prison chamber of his parents. In the midst of the terror of the 
10th of August, the queen had made the little fellow happy by pro- 
mising, as a reward for his presence of mind, that he should sleep 
in her room. It was when he hung in agony to the venerated 
form of his father, while his other relatives were fainting or weep- 
ing around, that the Dauphin first entered into the shadow of the 
cloud which was to go on increasing in darkness until it finally 
left him in the merciful midnight of prostrated intellect. 

At this time he was sufficiently old and intelligent to feel 
the full bitterness of a bereavement which has had few parallels 
on earth — and his acutely sensitive nature, at that tender age 
must have received a severe shock by the loss of his parent, his 
preceptor, his friend, his companion. Terrible was the tension 
of feeling with which the bereaved family waited the next morning 
for the promised interview, at the moment of death, wliich Louis, 
with a loving self-denial, forbore to grant. Charles the First, by his 
calm heroism on the scaffold, assured the restoration of his family 
to the throne of England— and Louis, treading with equal fortitude 
in his steps, w^ould have achieved the same end in respect to the 
sovereignty of France, but for the brutality which first bereft his 
child of reason, and the dark intrigue ly^iich, under the show c 



60 THE LOST PRINCE. 

kindness, removed liim, as probability indicates, from the country- 
he would otherwise have governed. 

I have no doubt, that Laraartine's judgment of the Count de 
Provence, is correct — that he loved his brother as much as it was 
possible for him to love any one ranking above him — and can easily 
conceive, that the blow which laid the discrowned head of Louis in 
the dust, occasioned him as much sorrow as it was possible for him 
to feel for any event, which removed the chief apparent obstacle 
between him and the throne. But, that he dreamed of permitting 
a helpless child to remain a perpetual barrier between him and the 
prize so long coveted, and so nearly his, is an idea which cannot 
be entertained by any fair estimate of the probable motives and 
aims of such a character. 

Hitherto, the royalist party, notwithstanding the efforts of De 
Provence and his adherents, had steadily resisted his assuming the 
title of Regent — and the pity with which the tragic death of the 
king had filled all hearts, forbade any attempt to do more than 
adopt that dignity now. Had Monsieur, in the face of the indig- 
nant sorrow of Europe, dared to assail, openly, the title of the 
young Prince to a throne that lay in ruins, it would have for ever 
defeated his ambitious designs. No course remained for him but to 
acquiesce nominally in the general sentiment, and seek to accom- 
plish his wishes in a more covert manner. So soon, therefore, as 
he received tidings of the execution of his brother, and while still 
at Ham, in "Westphalia, he issued the following proclamation. 
This was on the 28th January, 1792 : — 

" Louis Stanislaus Xavier de France, son of France, uncle of the king, 
Regent of the kingdom, to all those to whom these letters shall come, 
greeting : — 

" Penetrated with horror, on learning that the most criminal of men 
have crowned their numerous outrages, by the greatest offence, we have 
first implored heaven to obtain his assistance to surmount the sentiments 
of a profound grief, and the movements of our indignation ; so that we 
may be able to deliver ourselves to the accomplishment of the duties 



THE ORPHANS. 61 

which, in circumstances so grave, are the first in the order of those which 
the immutable latvs of the French monarchy imjwse upon us. 

'• Our most dear, and most honored brother and sovereign lord, the 
King. Louis XVI., of that name, having died on the 21st of the present 
month of January, under the parricidal steel which the ferocious usurpers 
of the sovereign authority in France have brought upon his august 
person : — 

" We declare, that the Dauphin, Louis Charles, born 27th March, 1785, 
is King of France and Navarre, under the name of Louis XVIL, and that, 
by the right of birth., as well as by the disposition of the fundamental laws 
of the kingdom,.^ we are and will be Regent of Fraoice^ during the 
TTiinority of the king., our nephew., and lord. 

"Invested in this quality, with the exercise of the rights and powers of 
sovereignty, and of the superior ministry of royal justice, we, in taking 
charge, being bound to acquit our obligations and duties, to the effect of 
employing, with the aid of God, the assistance of the good and loyal 
French of all orders of the kingdom, and of the recognized power of the 
sovereign allies of the crown of France, do pledge themselves, 

" 1st. To the liberation of the king. Louis XVIL, our nephew. 2d. Of 
the queen, his august mother and nurse ; of the princess, his sister, our very 
dear niece ; of the Princess Elizabeth his aunt, our very dear sister ; all 
detained in the severest captivity by the chiefs of faction, . and, simulta- 
neously, to the re-establishment of the monarchy upon the unalterable bases 
of the Constitution ; to the reformation of abuses introduced into the 
regimen of the public administration ; to the restoration of the religion of 
our fathers in the purity of its worship and canonical discipline ; to the 
re-establishment of the magistracy for the maintenance of order and the 
disposition of justice ; to the re-establishment of the French of all orders 
in the exercise of their legitimate rights, and in the enjoyment of all their 
property usurped and alienated ; to the severe and exemplary punishment 
of crimes ; to the re-establishment of the laws of peace ; and, in fine, to the 
accomplishment of the solemn engagements which we have taken, con- 
jointly with our very dear brother Charles Philip, of France, Count 
D'Artois, to whom are united our very dear nephews, grandsons of France, 
Louis Antoine, Due de Angouleme, and Charles Ferdinand, Due de Eerri, 
and our cousins, princes of the blood royal, Louis Joseph of Bourbon, 



62 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Prince of Conde, Louis Henry Joseph de Bourbon, Due of Bourbon, and 
Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, Due d'Enghien, by our deliberations 
addressed to our brother the king, 11th September, 1791, and otlier acts 
emanating from us, in which acts we persist and shall invariably persist. 

" To which end we command and ordain to all French and subjects of 
the king, to obey the commandments which they shall receive from us on 
account of the king, and the commandments of our very dear brother 
Charles Philip, of France, Count D'Artois, whom we have nominated and 
instituted lieutenant-general of the kingdom, when our said brother and 
lieutenant-general shall ordain anything on account of 'the king and the 
Regent of France. ****** 

" Given at Ham, in Westphalia, under our sign and seal ordinary, of 
which we shall make use for the acts of governing, until the seals of the 
kingdom, destroyed by the factions, shall have been re-established — and 
under the countersign of the ministers of state, the Marshals de Broglie and 

de Castries. 

" Signed, 

" Louis Sta?}islaus Xvaikr, 
" By the Regent of France, 
"' The Marshal Due de Broglie. 
" The Marshal de Castries." 

Now, on this proclamation I may remark, that neither by the 
right of birth, nor by the disposition of the fundamental laws of 
the kingdom, was the Count de Provence necessarily Regent on tho 
demise of his brother. Precedency was in favor of the regency of 
the queen-motlier, and a yiroposition that Marie Antoinette should 
be appointed regent had actually been made prior to the imprison- 
ment of the royal family, but was strenuously opposed by the 
adherents of Monsieur. Daring the minority of Louis XIIL, the 
Queen-mother, Marie de Medicis, became regent, although an uncle 
of the king, Gaston, Duke of Orleans, was alive. And so also on the 
accession of Louis XIV., Anne of x\ustria, as queen-mother, was nomi- 
nated, notwithstanding the imaginary " rights of birth and fundamen- 
tal laws," which should have given this office to the brother of the 
late king, Philip, Duke of Orleans. He had as little in the will of 



THE ORPHANS. 63 

Louis XVI. to rest on, as in the customs and laws of the kingdom. 
But to believe in his own rights and necessity was part of the fun- 
damental creed of De Provence. He accordingly issued another pro- 
clamation to the French refugees, in which the same idea is repeat- 
ed. " I have taken the title of Regent of the kingdom, which the 
right of my birth, gives during the minority of the king, Louis 
XVIL, ray nephew." 

But, another remarkable portion of the first of these documents, 
is the pledge given by the Regent, that he would seek to accom- 
plish the liberation of Louis XYIL from the Temple. We must 
expect, therefore, to *find the young Prince surrounded in prison 
by the secret emissaries of the Regent, whose character leaves no 
doubt that he would not undertake the project without turning it 
to his own advantage. Copies of the Regent's proclamations were 
printed and spread through France by millions, showing the vast 
system of agencies under his control. The Yendeean army, under 
La Rochejaquelin, proclaimed Louis XVIL king — but without any 
recognition of the authority of the Count de Provence — which was, 
however, proclaimed, together wdth the accession of the young king, 
by the Prince de Conde, in Swabia. Among the European govern- 
ments there was a general acknowledgment of the Dauphin as 
king. 

■ The hapless survivors in the Temple were, for a time, sunk in 
the lowest abyss of despondency. But, necessity roused them to 
action, and the queen entertained the hope of escape in company 
with her children. One plot was so ingenious that it would pro- 
bably have succeeded, had it been put into immediate execution. 
But, delay was fatal — and the increased severity with w^hich the 
young king was watched, rendered it impossible to effect his escape 
— while -Marie Antoinette refused to avail herself of a personal 
deliverance which would be attended with the abandonment of her 
son. 

In the spring of 1792, the health of the child began visibly to 
decline. He suffered much from fever, pain in the side, and gene- 



64 THE LOST PRINCE. 

ral debility — occasioned in a great measure by confinement, but 
more by mental exhaustion. It was impossible that one so young 
could live in the centre of the most terrific alarms and extreme revul- 
sions, without being weakened both in mind and body — and the 
murder of his father broke down completely the elasticity of his 
natural disposition. 

"While he remained under his mother's care everything was done 
for his relief. But the moment came when he was to be for ever 
separated from all that made his young life happy. On- June 3, 
the Convention decreed that he should be taken from his mother. 
The queen resisted desperately. But his life was threatened unless 
she complied, and she resigned him. For several days both mother 
and child remained inconsolable in their separation. But, thence- 
forth, the current of their lives was to flow on apart, and each had 
soon their peculiar sorrows. 

While she remained in the Temple, the queen occasionally saw 
her son on the top of the tower, through a chink in the wall, but 
she was soon deprived even of this consolation. On 2d August, she 
was conducted to the Conciergerie to await her trial. Her relatives 
never saw or heard from her again, except when she sent to obtain 
worsted to knit some stockings for her son. The last letter of the 
queen to the Princess Elizabeth, in which she committed to her the 
care of her children, seems never to have reached its destination. 
In this letter, the same omission is observable which we have 
remarked in the will of Louis XYI. She mentions her brothers in 
the same brief manner with the king, but, in compliance with the 
wishes of her deceased husband, commits the care of her children, 
solely and entirely, to the Princess Elizabeth. M. Beauchesne, 
indeed, attempts to show the afiectionate and confidential footing 
on which Marie Antoinette stood with ^he Count de Provence and 
the Count D'xirtois, by inserting a few lines, said to be written by 
the queen, to each of them, immediately after the execution of 
Louis XVI. If these documents are authentic, it is not surprising 
that at such a dreadful moment, she should write half a dozen lines 



THE ORPHANS. 66 

in a tone of affection and kindness to the brothers of her deceased 
husband. I am inclined to look on them as forgeries of Lonia 
XVIIL, because the signature of the Dauphin, appended to the one 
^vritten to the king, a fac simile of which is given at the end of the 
first edition of " Clerj's Memoirs." does not correspond with his 
handwriting at the time, but seems to belong to an earlier period. 
Louis the XVIIL, who showed the documents to Clery in a very 
dramatic manner, evidently, got him to publish them to create an 
idea that he had been on the best footing with the queen, which 
every one who knows their mutual relations during late years, 
must be satisfied, was not the case. But, be this as it may, acts 
speak more plainly than words; and the distrust with which both 
the king and queen regarded their ambitious and scheming brothers 
is shown by their committing at death the heir of their throne 
and their misfortunes to an unprotected and imprisoned woman. 

But the foresight of the dying queen seems to have extended yet 
further. She anticipated that efforts would be made to keep her 
children separate, and by so doing lessen their mutual attachment, 
and destroy the power they would possess so long as they continued 
united. It was not difficult for the keen perception of a woman 
like Marie Antoinette, thoroughly acquainted with all the persons, 
elements, and interests at work, to decipher the combinations 
which would probably be attempted- after her decease, and events 
show that she did not err in her calculations. "I hope," she 
writes to her sister, " that ichsn they are older tTiey icill 1)6 reunited 
with you " — and then, using language as explicit as prudence would 
permit, she begs her to remind her children, "that their friendship 
and mutual confidence will be their happiness,"— and, "that 
in whatsoever position they may find themselves, they will be only 
truly happy by their union," It was evidently her desire, that, 
avoiding all entangling connections with the families of the Count 
de Provence and the Count D'Artois, her children should, for their 
mutual interest, remain together under the sole care and guardian- 
ship of the Princess Elizabeth, 



66 THE LOST PRINCE. 

But few were the thouglits which the dying queen could give to 
this world. Her trial was the burlesque preliminary to the judical 
murder, which on 16th October, 1793, left the Dauphin and liis 
sister orphans, unconscious of their loss. She died on the scaffold, 
with the dignity and courage befitting her race and station ; and 
fulfilled her djing wish, to show the same firmness which had 
distinguished her husband in his last moments, and the calmness 
of one whose conscience was at peace. 



CHAPTER V- 

SIMON. 

In the Eevolution all parties deceived themselves, and ever> 
individual miscalculated his interests. The king trusted in the 
love of his people — they brought him to the scaffold. Monsieur 
fostered convulsion in the hope that it would unseat his brother 
and enthrone himself — he was twenty years an exile. Egalit^ looked 
for an Orleans, instead of a Bourbon dynasty — the same blade that 
decai)itated the king dissipated the illusion. The ambition of 
Lafayette was to be the Washington of America — to save life he 
had to abandon politics. The Royalists fell before the Constitution- 
alists — the Constitutionalists before the Girondists — the Girondists 
before the Mountain — the Mountain before men as base as them- 
selves, but less bloody because less bold. 

On the 3d July, 1793, when the young Prince found himself 
separated from his relatives, the party of Marat and Robespierre 
was in full and apparently stable power. They were cruel on 
principle. They shed blood to cement institutions. It is probable, 
they sincerely contemplated a time when the Reign of Terror 
should cease ; but it was when the guillotine had left no more aris- 
tocrats in France. To them the death of Marie Antoinette seemed 
necessary to widen the breach between republican France and its 



SIMON. 67 

enemies, and render a return to royalty impossible. They would 
have killed the Dauphin to eradicate the race, if they could have 
found any justification for the act. The weakness of childhood 
was its defence. 

Simon was a shoemaker, who lived next door to Marat, in the 
Rue de Cordeliers — and it is, perhaps, to this circumstance that 
history owes its acquaintance with this interesting personage. He 
was about fifty-seven years of age, short, robust, and square, with 
features of sinister and repulsive deformity — coarse black hair, 
thick eyebrows — and eyes which, could they have been prolonged 
at their inner extremities, would have met in a sharp angle about 
the top of the forehead. His wife was a person of similar age ; 
short, fat, brown, and ugly. 

This respectable pair might have passed quietly through life but 
for the Revolution, which dislocated all conditions, and aflTorded, 
like all drunkenness, an admirable facility for the display of 
character. To be coarse, brutal, and unfeeling, was Simon's 
nature — fortune set him on a pinnacle, to exhibit to generations a 
specimen of the domestic ruffian. The first effect of the Revolu- 
tion, had been to make him an orator in his section, and the 
eloquence which might else have been confined to bestowing 
curses on Marie Jeane, was soon exerted, under the shade of the 
trees in the Rue de Cordeliers, in denouncing kings, and instruct- 
ing sans-culottes in the science of self-government. 

Marat, eminently qualified to act as professor and confer degrees 
in the college of rascality, into which revolutionary France had 
rapidly resolved itself, partly, out of neighborly feeling, that 
lingering vestige of amiability in rogues, and partly out of a just 
appreciation of the latent genius for low evil in his friend, pitched 
upon Simon as the best person within the range of his acquaint- 
ance, to give a democratic education to the young descendant of 
St. Louis, and destroy him if necessary, both in soul and body. 
Robespierre approved of the nomination, well knowing the pliant 



68 THE LOST PRINCE. 

rascality of the man, his revolutionary enthusiasm, and his fidelity 
in evil. 

His patrons must have been pleased with their discernment, 
when they heard the celebrated conversation between Simon and 
the deputation from the Committee of General Safety. " Citizens, 
what is to be done with this young wolf? He is insolent. I will 
tame hira — but what, after all, is desired? Carry him away?" 
"No." "Kill him?" "No." "Poison him?" "No." "What 
then ?" " Get rid of him." 

This was a refinement beyond the intellectual ability of Simon 
to originate, but he was just the person to carry it into effect. 
He failed indeed — but it was through lack of time, and the 
baffling strength of his victim's constitution. 

Behold then the child in company with Simon. He had been, 
up to that moment, accustomed to all ennobling sentiments and all 
endearing treatment. Torn from the embrace of his mother, he 
was conducted to the chamber where he had parted from his 
father on the eve of his execution, and where he had, for many 
weeks, enjoyed his unremitting attention as his instructor. The 
memories of the past must have returned with overpowering 
violence. What a change of tutors, from Louis XVI. to Simon ! 

His jailer, being yet in ignorance of the designs of the revolu- 
tionary chiefs, did not, at first, treat him with full severity. He 
taunted, but did not beat him. Grief kept the weeping child 
silent for a time. He declined food. Then, a sense of wrong 
inflamed him to demand, indignantly, by what law he was separated 
from his mother; but obtaining no reply, he resigned himself in 
apathy to his fate. 

After two days, Simon, beginning to enter into the spirit of his 
employment, attempted to teach him to chant the Carmagnole and 
cr}^, "Yive la Kepublique." Being unsuccessful, he gave hira a 
hurdy-gurdy. " Thy wolf of a mother, and thy dog of an aunt, play 
on the harpsichord. You must accompany them. It wiU make a 



SIMON. 69 

nice hurly burly." The child refused, because he would not insult 
his mother — and received his first blow as a punishment. Similar 
scenes occurred, and being still strong, he resisted with spirit. 
"Animal," said Simon, in reply to his expostulations against 
corporeal punishment, "I am here to command you, and can do 
what I please. Liberty and equality for ever!" 

As soon as he learned definitely the indefinite powers conferred 
on him, he began, in earnest, his system of brutalization, and did 
everything to corrupt the morals, and break down the constitution 
of his victim. "He has no children," cried the agonized Macdufi', 
when informed of the pillage of his castle, and the slaughter of 
his wife and little ones ; and the inhumanity of the childless 
Simon is a good commentary on the fidelity to nature of the poet. 

A few days after his entry on his employment, the news arrived of 
the capture of Conde by the Austrian army — " Damned wolf's cub," 
said Simon to the child, " you are half Austrian — you deserve to be 
half-killed." The 14th July, was the anniversary of the taking of 
the Bastile, but the popular joy on the occasion was maddened 
into frenzy, by the assassination of Marat on the previous evening. 

When this news reached the apartment of Simon and his pupil, 
as soon as the first outburst of grief and rage was over, the jailer 
determined to celebrate the combined feast and fast of revolution in 
a characteristic manner. He obtained wine, brandy, and pipes, and 
carried his wife and the child to the platform of the Tower. The 
mingled sounds of merriment and mourning from the city below 
ascended to their ears — and, as the drunken revel on the Tower 
increased, Simon amused himself by puifing tobacco-smoke in the 
Prince's face, and telling him that the mourning which he still wore 
for his father, was only retained for the sake of Marat. " Ah, ha, 
Capet is in mourning for Marat." It was thus that every public 
event which happened in those exciting times — every reverse of 
the republican arms — every disaster in the city was made an occa- 
sion cf ill-treating the unfortunate child — of dragging him about 
by the hair — lifting him by his ears — dashing his head against the 



VO THE LOST PRINCE. 

wall — stifling him with smoke — taunting him with the misfortunes 
and asserted crimes of his family — and telling him revolting stories 
of his mother and other female relatives. 

His beautiful hair and his mourning were offensive to his jailer, 
who despoiled him of both — put the red cap on his head, compelled 
him to drink to intoxication, and, in this state, taught him to 
swear, to sing revolutionary songs, and repeat odious tales concern- 
ing his mother, which he afterwards adduced as evidence against 
her. 

Before the removal of Marie Antoinette from the Tower, she 
had the misfortune to see the wretched child in company with his 
jailer in one of his fiercest paroxysms of rage — and to find him fast 
becoming a wreck in body and in mind. To enter into all the 
revolting details, which M. Beauchesne has carefully collected, is 
not necessary for my purpose in this chapter. I simply wish to 
show the gradual manner in which the constitution of the child 
was broken, and his mind destroyed. His beauty began to desert 
him ; the alternate flush and pallor of drunkenness succeeded to the 
rich hue of health. The knowledge he had acquired under the 
teaching of his father and his successive tutors was soon lost — his 
proficiency in writing, which had been remarkable in a child of 
his age, was changed into a slow, painful, and almost illegible 
scrawl, scarcely sufficient to sign his name — and the rapid pro- 
gress of demoralization and imbecility cannot be better shown than 
by the hideous accusations he was compelled to make against the 
mother he had loved so much. 

The day of the execution of Marie Antoinette at length arrived. 
The princesses were entirely ignorant of what was going forward. 
Simon himself, who, devoted entirely to his charge, lived in 
great isolation, suspecting the truth from the unusual stir in the 
city — but, not certain that it was the case, carried, as was his 
wont on all public occasions, his wife and the Prince to the platform 
of the Tower — and, in consideration of the occasion, permitted the 
child to play at ball while the procession was marching to the 



ISIMON. 7 X 

scaffold. He then made a bet with his wife, that it was the 
moment of the queen's execution — and amused himself in the even- 
ing by making the poor child drink some of the brandy which his 
wager purchased. 

For somewhat more than six months this fearful tyranny conti- 
nued. Simon confined himself in the strictest manner, and with 
conscientious fidelity, to the limits of his assigned duty. He would 
have been ready at any moment, had the command been issued, to 
put the child to death— but his commission did not extend beyond 
the slow process of demoralization and domestic ill-treatment, by 
which murder might ape the appearance of natural decay. 

Of all the crimes with which the Eevolution is stained, there is 
not one which in demoniac atrocity can be compared to this. The 
drunken assassins of September are innocent to those who, in cool 
blood, could conceive such a project for ridding themselves of 
a child whose only crime was the misfortune of his birth. 

Simon set himself to his task with scientific zest, patience, and 
perseverance. He had no idea of hurrying a work which, to be 
done well, must be done with the forbearance of death in its most 
insidious advances. It was sufiicient that, every hour made the 
child a hair's breadth worse in mind or body than he was the pre- 
ceding — that no petty irritation — no insult — no wrong which the 
ingenuity of malice could suggest was omitted— that no oppor- 
tunity was passed by to impair a virtue or to implant a vice, to 
take away a grace or add a vulgarity. He was agent at once for 
death and hell. 

The care and affection by which the tenderest of mother's seeks 
to foster all that is good, and beautiful, and healthful, in her only 
child, were outdone by the demoniac devotion of Simon to the task 
of breaking down the constitution, deforming the appearance, cor- 
rupting the morals, and weakening the mind of his pupil. If he 
eat, it was to be driven from the half-finished meal weeping, and, 
perhaps, bleeding. On one occasion, he narrowly escaped the 
destruction of his eye by a blow inflicted at dinner. 



72 THE LOST PRINCE. 

If he called the child kindly to him, it was to spurn him with 
his foot to the other side of the apartment. If amusement was 
permitted or encouraged, it was to mock his misery, to abuse his 
parents, to caricature the downfall of his house, to stupefy him by 
inebriation, to make him sing obscene songs, to teach him to curse, - 
blaspheme and lie — and the child was praised and encouraged in 
proportion as he cooperated in the work of murder and demora- 
lization of which he was the victim. If his health was broken down 
too rapidly, a physician was sent for to lengthen out his misery, and 
give to murder the aspect of tenderness. If he revived more than 
was desirable, some new brutality speedily reduced him to the re- 
quired level. If a day had passed without something being done to 
injure him, Simon would have regretted it, like Titus, as a lost day. 
"When he had been peculiarly happy in his combinations, he retired 
to rest with the self-satisfaction of a man who has performed his 
duty — and then arranged beforehand some new mortification, 
hardship, indignity, or immorality for the ensuing day. 

In all this he was strictly conscientious. He believed himself 
engaged in a work for which the Republic owed him gratitude, and 
to which there was dignity attached. He was the representative 
of the French nation, performing an act of retributive justice on the 
offspring of a race of tyrants, and deserving the praise of posterity 
by destroying the last link in the succession. He had arrived at 
that depth of iniquity in which evil is a man's good, and to fail in 
crime is to fail in duty. • 

" The Republic is eternal," he said to the child, one day. " There 
is nothing eternal," Avas the reply, and then, as if struck with 
remorse for the mistake, "there is nothing eternal but God." 
Even Simon's tyranny was to come to an end. A more lucrative 
office was offered him. He could not retain the two. He resigned, 
not without regret, his unfinished task in the Temple, but before he 
left, called the child up to him, and then felled him to the floor with 
his fist. Such was the parting between the Prince and his 
jailer. 



SIMON. 73 

"While this scene of terror was enacting in tlie Temple, the Oonnt 
de Provence was exercising, with all the pomp which, in his idea, 
the situation demanded, his office of Regent of the kingdom. The 
miseries which his nephew was suffering could not be unknown 
to him. But while they were at their height he was plotting, 
through his agents, for the establishment of his own power upon 
the ruins of the fallen monarchy. It is highly probable that these 
emissaries deceived him, and for their own purposes reported 
interviews and correspondence with Danton and Eobespierre, which 
had no foundation but in their misrepresentations. 

But, however, this might be, the Regent himself wrote to the 
revolutionary chiefs, and imagined that he had possession of the 
clue to a counter revolution in his own favor, in Paris, and that 
the troubles would terminate by proclaiming him king. "He 
acknowledged," says Lamartine, "as king, the child then a captive, 
who was being slowly immolated in the Temple. He gratified the 
friends of his brother, the Count D'Artois, by appointing him 
Lieutenant-General of the kingdom — a painful but politic division 
of that ideal authority which these two princes were going to 
exercise in exile. Recognised by the army of Oonde and by the 
Empress of Russia, he addressed solemn proclamations to Europe 
and to the army of Oonde at each tragic blow struck by the 
Convention against the members of the royal family. He fomented, 
with all his efforts, the troubles, the insurrections, the civil wars 
of the South and La Yend6e. He received all the distinguished 
negotiators from France, and all the political adventurers who 
throw themselves between two causes, less to serve them than to 
serve themselves. 

" His court and his councU were the perpetual focus of plans, of 
chimeras, of conspiracies, real or imaginary, of the corruption of 
generals, of the venality of the Tribune, and movements of the 
people, with which the men of intrigue amused the idleness or 
flattered the importance of the exiled courts. He there imbibed 
the feeling and the taste for those secret reports, for that confidence 

4 



1i 



THE LOST PRINCE. 



in underlings, for those intrigues of diplomacy, of police, of gorern- 
inent, for that domestic favoritism and that personal labor which 
afterwards distinguished him on the throne. He there maintained 
that royal attitude, and that distance between him and the crowd 
which he never allowed to be violated, except by a few confidants. 
He knew the prestige of distance for men and for things, and 
constantly withdrew from events and from observation, to main- 
tain a more imposing attitude. He assiduously studied there the 
history of his country and his race, in order to personify in himself 
the power, the kings, and the grandeur of his house, and to recall 
some day in himself alone, all the illustrious men, or at least all the 
mementos of his race. He prepared himself incessantly for the 
throne, never doubting that he would be recalled to it by the 
vicissitudes of human affairs, and not wishing that his reign should 
find him for a single day deficient in dignity. Little sought after, 
and less beloved, he commanded respect from others by the respect 
which he affected for himself." 

And here I would repeat my conviction, that such a man ever 
seriously designed to permit the infant son of Louis XYI. to mount 
the throne to his prejudice — is contrary to every probability which 
knowledge of human character could lead us to entertain. He 
knew the child to be possessed of a strong constitution and of 
excellent natural abilities — and that, in bringing him publicly 
forward, he Avould be taking the most effectual step to prevent 
his ever being king himself — more especially, as the feelings of 
loyalty which the Revolution had outraged, and the regret and 
veneration which the memory of the martyred king and queen 
inspired, would naturally centre on the object that inherited their 
name and rights, and recalled their virtues and their sorrows. The 
man who, when the monarchy of France stood erect in all the here- 
ditary prestige and potency of centuries, could deliberately contem- 
plate its overthrow, and lay his plans for the humiliation of his 
brother, to effect his own elevation, was not the person to be thus 
thwarted in his ambition by a feeble child in prison. I could as soon 



SIMON. 75 

believe in the sincerity of the kiss of Judas as in the loyalty of 
Louis XYIII. to Louis XVII. 

His acknowledgment of him as king proceeded from the same 
policy which dictated the appointment of his brother as Lieutenant- 
Governor of France. This very division of authority has in it 
something suspicious — for the Count de Provence was not a man 
to weaken his power in this manner, but through the compulsion 
of political motive. And had his own right stood on a strong 
foundation, had there been no necessity for cultivating the good 
will of the Count D'Artois, to cover sinister designs and support 
dubious claims, and give him an interest in concealing crimes 
committed for the advantage of another — he would have kept the 
reins of government in his own hands. 

But leaving the Regent to his plots and his ambition, let us 
return to the little sufferer in the Temple, the most fearful portion 
of whose existence was now beginning. 

It was a mistake in Marat and Bobespierre, not to stipulate that 
Simon should leave his wife behind when he undertook the tutor- 
ship of the Prince. Madame Simon, though not remarkable for 
sweetness of disposition, was still a woman^ and did much to soften 
the severity of her husband's conduct. The beauty and innocence 
of the boy won from the first upon her heart. She regretted that 
she had no children herself, and would have gladly been kind to 
the little captive. Not unfrequently she interposed to check the 
brutality of Simon, and paid all those nameless little attentions to a 
child's comfort which only a woman can do. 

But, when the child got rid of Simon's ill-treatment, he lost his 
wife's care. The authorities had lately grown economical, and 
curtailed in every way the expenses of the prisoners — and now 
thought it a useless outlay to keep a tutor for the Prince. They 
therefore determined he should for the future live alone. 

He was, consequently, transferred from the apartment he 
had hitherto occupied to a smaller one, which had been used by 
It had only one window, fastened by 



76 THE LOST PRINCE. 

padlocks. Besides which, it stood in a very deep recess, and the 
light was obscured by immense iron, bars. 

It was on the 19th January, 1794, that Simon left him, and from 
that time till the 27th July, more than six months, he remained in 
solitude. His food was handed to him through a revolving aperture, 
which did not permit him even to see the person who delivered it. 
During the whole period the door of his apartment was never 
opened. No gleam of sunlight — no breath of fresh air — came to 
the little victim. To sweep his apartment, while strength per- 
mitted him, was merely to transfer the filth from one place to 
another. 

A gruff voice, bidding him at evening go to bed, or calling him at 
dead of night to present himself for inspection at an iron grating, 
through which the light of a lanthorn was thrown upon his person, 
was his whole intercourse with the human species. 

It is difficult to conceive the physical condition to which a child 
would be reduced by such confinement. But, his mental state sur- 
passes imagination. He no longer had liquor to inebriate him. 
For awhile he must have pondered in silence over the mingled and 
inexplicable past, the magnificence, the power, the dreamy tender- 
ness, the beauty, the terror, the tears, the strife, the humiliation, 
the heart-rending separations, and the systematic brutalization, 
succeeded by blank solitude, silence, and breathless suffocation — 
and then — having no clue through the labyrinth — intense feeling 
and agonising thought, would gradually yield to apathy. Thus, 
in loneliness, and darkness, and filth, and intolerable stench, devour- 
ed by vermin, and sharing his food with rats, all consciousness 
would cease, and mechanical, vegetable life, devoid of memory, 
and destitute of hope, would alone remain. 

But while all was dead silent misery in the apartment of the 
child, the Eevolution was advancing to its goal, with giant strides. 

The 5th March saw the downfall of Marat and Desmoulins, the 
last of the fierce enthusiasts, who, too late, regretting the excesses 
into which they had fallen, attempted to atone for the past, by 



SIMON. 77 

stemming the torrent of blood, and perished, tardy advocates of 
humanity. Then, succeeded the reign of death, when blood 
drenched the soil of France, like a hot thunder shower. On the 
10th May, Madame Ehzabeth, the sister of Louis XVI., poured 
from her veins the purest libation which had yet fallen on the 
scaffold. The children were now, doubly orphans, but they knew 
it not. At length, came 27th July — and Eobespierre, who, a little 
more than a month previously, had proclaimed the existence of God, 
fell beneath his retributive power. Many a prison door was then 
thrown open — and among them, that of the apartment of the 
young Prince, whose sufferings were ameliorated at nearly the same 
time when Simon accompanied his master, Eobespierre, to the 
scaffold. 

Baras, commandant of the National Guard, appointed a man 
named, Laurent, keeper of the Temple. But his powers, in respect 
to the prisoners, were of a very limited character, and liable, 
in all things, to be controlled by the acting commissary, who 
visited the prison daily. As soon, however, as Laurent entered on 
his employment, he, naturally, visited the different chambers of the 
Temple, to see the condition of the prisoners. 

It was night-time when he first came to the door of the young 
Prince. The lanthorn was applied as usual to the grating, and the 
child summoned to the door. But no reply was made to the loud 
and repeated calls on him, to rise and show himself. He had, in 
fact, now, lost the power of motion as well as of mental conscious- 
ness. A feeble sound, showing he was still alive, was all that came 
from the suffocating stench of the dungeon. 

The barricaded door was, at last, broken open, and Laurent and 
his associates made their way as well as they could, to the bed-side 
of the captive. The chamber smelt like the grave, and was 
hideous as gloom, filth, and pestilential air could make it. The last 
food received by the child was untouched. He was worn to a 
skeleton. His livid skin was scarcely visible for dirt. He was 
covered with vermin. There was vermin everywhere — on the bed. 



Y8 THE LOST PRINCE. 

on the floor, on tlie walls, in every fold of the rags which hung 
about him. They were matted in his hair, and knitted in every 
hollow of his body. The noise around him made him tremble — 
but he did not stir. He answered to no question . He was con- 
scious of nothing. He breathed. His open eyes had no 
expression. Their color had changed. He had the loolc not of a 
fool^ hut of an idiot* His bones seemed protruding angularly 
from his skin — for he had no flesh to conceal them. Both his 
knees and his elbows were covered with tumors, the result of long 
confinement, bad usage, and depression of spirits. 

A few hours more of such solitude would have ended his career. 
God willed otherwise, and he survived. He was to enter on a new 
stage of his chequered existence, under altered circumstances, 
which we will pause to review. 



CHAPTER YI. 

INTEIGUE. 

" The Republic," said Robespierre, " falls with me." The pro- 
phecy was true, and based on a profound insight into the elements 
at work in France. The Revolution had spared no one capable of 
conducting it to a successful issue, and of founding a stable and 
compact structure on the bloody pedestal. To do so, required 
incorruptible honesty and single-minded devotion to an idea. The 
race of unselfish, albeit, bloody devotees to principle was fast dis- 
appearing. The great revolutionary chiefs had successively fallen 
— all with whom the Revolution from its earliest stages had been 
identified — and he was the only person who inherited the memories 
of the past. To strike at him was to repudiate that past, to stig- 
matize its deeds as crimes, and say — France has awoke from her 
dream of blood, and will no more of it. She sought liberty, but 

♦ Beauchesne, vol. ii. p. 258, 



INTRIGUE. 79 

Kite found bell, and cannot love institutions whicli entwine them- 
selves with a name she abhors. The jubilant crowds who attend- 
ed Robespierre to the scaffold, chanted the requiem of the Revo- 
lution. 

From that moment began a new era. Its ultimate form was all 
uncertain. But full scope was open for speculation, for ambition, 
for intrigue, for plots and counterplots, and every evil work which 
shuns the light. Bold, avowed action was over. The dominant 
party — more sanguinary than Robespierre — were compelled to lean 
to the side of mercy, and pursue a course of moderation abhorrent 
to their principles, but in keeping with their mediocrity. Every- 
thing took a milder tone. More external decency prevailed, pri- 
sons were emptied, tribunals were more cautious, jailers less 
severe. 

With respect to the captive, the republican policy, as well as the 
republican interest, was unchanged. But, another Simon was not 
to be found, and had there been, the times would have repudiated 
him. The condition of the child vf as, therefore, alleviated, but 
contrary to the wish of those in power. They admitted the per- 
plexity his life occasioned them, their unwillingness to abate the 
rigor of his confinement, and their fear of attempts to seat him on 
the throne. But they shrank from the responsibility of extreme 
measures, and restricted themselves to such a measure of neglect 
as the newly-awakened sense of decency rendered safe. 

From this point we need a critical examination of the proofs 
adduced by M. Beauchesne of the death of Louis XVII. ; and it is, 
therefore, necessary to inquire into the general nature of his w^ork. 
It was published in Paris at the latter end of 1852, and the reasons 
which induced its publication are thus stated in the preface ; — 

'• We have understood from the beginnuig of our researches how it has 
happened that public opinion has never heeii definitely settled on a point 
imperceptible in appearance, but, nevertheless, considerable — the death of 
a child. France and Europe have only assisted from afar in the drama of 
the Temple — they have not seen all the scenes — they have only learned 



80 THE LOST PRINCE. 

the lamentable dmoument in such a manner that rooyn was still left open 
for doubt Before the veil which has enveloped the tragical end of the son 
of Louis XVL, one is not astonished to hear it said, with the warmth of a 
profound conviction, that the young victim went out living from his prison 
It is conceded that a child really died in the Temple, but it is added, 
that if it was the olTspring of our kings, no one could affirm it — that the 
physicians have certified to his death, but not to his identity — that it is 
not known how the man in the iron mask came on earth — that it is equal- 
ly uncertain how the infant was taken from the Temple, and that the 
tomb of the one remains as mysterious as the cradle of the other." 

Let me here call attention to the admission of M. Beauchesne. 
He confesses that, up to the time of the publication of his work, no 
proof had been adduced of the death of the child. Since the agi- 
tation of the subject in this country, some who profess to be pro- 
foundly versed in questions of French history and opinion, have 
assured us that the death of Louis XVIL is as well authenticated as 
that of iN'apoleon. Let them listen to M, Beauchesne. Had there 
been proof of the fact, his work would not have appeared. It v/as 
published to supply a felt deficiency. He tells us, that up to 
]!Tovember, 1852, "room was still open for doubt," and that, in 
fact, there was in France " a profound conviction" of the Prince's 
existence. 

"It was natural," he continues, "after this, that impostors should 
think they were authorized to impose themselves on the world as the 
inheritors of a glorious name." "The conviction of his death has for me 
the character of a certainty, authentically demonstrated — a curse on me, 
if my mind, in possession of the truth, should suffer my pen to lie. I have 
spared neither care, nor i-esearch, nor study to arrive at this truth — I have 
particularly known Lasne and Gomin, the two last jailers of the Tower, 
in whose arms Louis XVIL died." " We hope that we bring to this history 
not only the certitude, but the material authentic proof that the Dauphin 
of France, the son of Louis XVI. really died m the Temple. I have not 
raked among these ruins, nor built this edifice to give food to the passions 
of the day. I have atill less the pretension of pleading a cause." 



INTRIGUE. 81 

It will be seen that all the fresh evidence on which he relies 
to settle the question, consists simply of the testimony of Lasne and 
Oomin^ which, strangely enough, is not ushered before the world 
until after their death. M. Beauchesne has built a very imposing 
structure on narrow and infirm foundations. No one who looked, 
for the first time, upon his portly volumes, containing each their 
five hundred pages, would be apt to imagine that all the solemnly 
heralded evidence, which was to lift up for ever tlie veil from a 
hitherto impenetrable mystery, dwindled into this. 

He spent, we are told, twenty years upon the work — as much 
as Gibbon spent on the Decline and Fall — and there is something 
awful in the literary labor of a mature intellect for twenty years upon 
a single historic point. Either M. Beauchesne's habits of composi- 
tion are very slow, or he must have found he had a hard task. For 
there is nothing novel in the bulk of his work. Whole pages of it 
are transcribed verbatim from such well known writers as Hue and 
Clery. The novelty and the point of his book consist entirely in 
the autograph testimony of Lasne and Gomin, taken from his album. 
Here is what Johnson's ghost calls "the muscipular abortion" of 
the " parturient mountain." 

But how is it, that for fifty seven years, it never entered into the 
human brain to substantiate the fact of the Dauphin's death in the 
Temple, by the production of the testimony of these men? How 
came there such a lack of discernment in the French nation? 
Because there was evident folly in the attempt. If the Dauphin 
escaped, it must have been with the connivance of these very 
officials. With the same plausibility might a counsel for tlie 
defence produce two men, accused of stealing some article from 
their master's shop, to prove that it was not stolen. Fifty-seven 
years work wonderful revolutions — but cannot make testimony, 
which has been worthless all that time, worth anything now. 

Concerning M. Beauchesne and his motives, I know nothing, 
and will not trouble myself with conjecturing. I will take 
his narrative as it stands. The renewed attention I have 

4* 



82 THE LOST PRINCE. 

given to his work lias not lessened, but confirmed my conviction 
of the insuflSciency of his testimony, and of the weakness of his 
position. So far from allaying doubt, his narrative more com- 
pletely throws the question open — and the nearer we approach the 
heart of the mystery, the more profound is the conviction that, 
whether Louis XVII. be now alive or not — which is a question for 
after-consideration, there is no proof that he died in the Temple — 
nay, no probability — and, further still, no possibility — if the inquiry 
be limited to the question, whether the body represented as his 
was really so or not. And this is the issue. It is not pretended 
that he died at any other time than the 8th June, 1795 — nor under 
any other circumstances than those specified by Beauchesne. 
"Whoever, therefore, desires to prove the death^ must first show that 
under the circumstances it icas 2^hysicaU2/ possible. And here, I 
apprehend, will be an insuperable bar. 

Laurent who was appointed, on the fall of Robespierre, guardian 
of the children of Louis XVI. was a man of private property, not 
devoid of taste, information, and good feeling, but a zealous repub- 
lican, and devoted to the interests of his party. His appointment 
was an index of the times. From him, nothing unworthy could 
be asked — but care was taken that his appointment, which gave 
dignity to the position of the Convention, should be of as little 
service to the child as possible. He was permitted to visit the 
captive only at particular periods, and then but for a short time. 

To the child, however, in the vegetable condition of life to which 
he was now reduced, solitude was no longer a hardship. He had 
now fallen into that listless apathy which distinguished him, as 
far as we have any reliable accounts, to the last moment spent in 
the Temple. He had sense enough to play mechanically with a 
toy or a flower, but felt no want of companionship. 

I have mentioned that, on the opening of his chamber, his knees 
and elbows were covered with swellings, the result of filth and 
confined air. The location of these swellings is not only a means 
of distinguishing the Prince from the substitute who died in the 



INTRIGUE, 83 

Temple, on the 8tli June, but of establisliing the identity of the 
child at this period, in the Temple, with the one seen and reported 
on, by Harmand. He also suffered from a continual pain in the 
head, which w^as so extreme that the slightest touch made him 
groan ; and he could neither endure a comb to be passed through 
his matted hair, nor even the gentle friction attending the applica- 
tion of ointment. But change of air, cleanliness, plain wholesome 
food, the absence of all irritation, and profound repose, gradually 
revived his corporeal strength, though his mind continued pros- 
trate and unobservant. 

But while he was thus slowly recovering, the name of Louis 
XVII. was the rallying point of hope to tens of thousands in 
France, and the perplexities of the Convention daily increased. 
It seemed alike dangerous to keep hira in the heart and centre of 
political intrigue, or to banish him from the country. 

The position of the royalist refugees, at this period, Avas peculiar. 
The Count de Provence, w^ho had usurped the title of Regent, held 
his court at Verona — and the Count D'Artois, at Arnheim, while 
the Prince de Cond6, with his army, Avas actively engaged on the 
Rhine. The Regent had little power over the otlier two, and his 
position, so long as the Prince was known to survive, was embar- 
rassing in the extreme. 

At first, the brothers had hoped for assistance from foreign 
courts, but, with the exception of Russia, none officially acknow- 
ledged them, though they clandestinely received and corresponded 
with their agents. The war in La Vendee promised no profitable 
results ; mainly because the two princes would not risk themselves 
on the scene of action. Disappointed, however, in his expecta- 
tions of foreign aid, the principal trust of the Regent was, 
nevertheless, in La Vendee, and on his agents and intrigues in 
France. 

In La Vendee, and especially among its chiefs and generals, 
loyalty was a religion and a passion — no thought, unworthy the 
hero, the martyr, or the patriot, burne4 in |he bosoms of the 



84 THE LOST PRINCE. 

peasant warriors or their glorious leaders. Unstained by corrupt 
intrigue, unwarped by selfish ambition, they fought and bled for 
"what they deemed the right. 

But they distrusted the Regent, and unfurled their banner solely 
for the captive monarch of the Temple. To obtain possession of 
him was their great object, and it may be easily seen, that while 
nothing could be more detrimental to the ambitious designs of the 
Eegent, than to permit them to do so, his agents could only 
approach them successfully by feigning an interest in the Prince, 
and promising to procure his escape, and his surrender to them. 

From these agents in the interior, the Count de Provence 
derived hopes of a speedy movement in his favor — and held inter- 
course, real or imaginary, with the heads of tjie French 
government.* There is far more probability, that the men now in 
power Avould intrigue with him, than those in previous periods. 
The principal roj-alist agents, were the Count D'Entraignes, 
Lemaitre, Laville Heurnois, and the Marquis de Fenouil. They 
assumed the appearance of republicans, and often deceived the 
French government, making their way into places least to have been 
expected. They swarmed in Paris, and availed themselves of the 
wide-spread sympathy in favor of the children of Louis XVI. to 
increase the popular dissatisfaction with the Eepublic, and the 
desire to return to monarchy. In addition, royalist journals began 
openly to advocate a counter-revolution, and though prosecuted, 
the editors escaped with impunity. Thus, while there was much 
to discourage the Regent in the apathy shown by European courts, 
there was everything in the internal condition of France, evi- 
dently in a transition state, to promise the fulfilment of his 
original expectation — that, his nephew being removed, the Revolu- 
tion would terminate by elevating him to the throne. 

After being guardian ^to the Prince for some months, Laurent, a 
man of social habits, felt wearied with the incessant servitude, and 
applied to the Comraitte of General Safety for a colleague. On the 

* Thiers, voL iii. p, 281. 



INTRIGUE. 85 

Sth November, a man named Gomin, was appointed to assist him. 
In this nomination we find the first traces of the influence of the 
Eegent in the Temple, on which, according to his proclamation, 
his eye had been long fixed with the design of removing the king. 

Hitherto, his agents had been nnable to gain any footing there, 
but, under the altered condition of things, the case was different. 
" M. le Marquis de Fenouil, who knew Gomin intimately," says 
Beauchesne, an unimpeachable witness on such a point, " had, 
thanks to certain soi-distant patriotic intrigues, which he knew 
how to manage and employ with art, contributed powerfully to a 
nomination, which was a guarantee for the royalist party." In 
other words, Gomin was placed in the Temple by one of the crea- 
tures of the Count de Provence, to act according to instructions. 
We may be certain, that the pretended republican intrigues — the 
nature of which Beauchesne is careful not to mention — had rela- 
tion to Louis XVIL, both because by virtue of them he gained 
the power of nominating his keeper, and also, because when he 
had placed Gomin in the Temple, he kept up a constant corres- 
pondence with him, by means of Doisy, his valet de chambre, 
who, under pretext of being a relative, went frequently to visit 
him, and converse respecting La Vendee and the Prince.* 

There was also another royalist, named Debierne, who, being 
appointed acting commissary, opened instant communication with 
Gomin concerning the escape of the Prince, and received the pro- 
mise of his co-operation.f Gomin and Debierne were in the habit 
of holding stealthy interviews in the apartment of the steward, 
Lienard, who also acted as a sentinel. Debierne, as well as Doisy,. 
falsely represented himself as a relative of Gomin, and under this 
pretext came frequently to see him. He brought, at first, play- 
things for the Prince, then showed Gomin some assignats issued in 
the name of Louis XVIL, and made payable on the Restoration. 
He also informed the keeper of a design for carrying the young king 
into La Vendee. " The good heart of Gomin," says Beauchesne, 

• Beauchesne, vol, il., p. 208. f Ibid. 



86 THE LOST PRINCE. 

"opened itself to this hope with a lively joy." Here, then, we 
find evidence that the agents of the Kegent were playing with both 
parties — the Convention and the Vendeeans — and that Gorain 
entered fully into the scheme for the removal of the captive. 
On another occasion, whenDebierne came to see "his accomplice" 
— the word accomplice is that used by Beauchesne — he brought 
concealed under his cloak a dove or pigeon. The sight of it occa- 
sioned Gomin some anxiety — as it was, in truth, a very suspicious 
present — and, if discovered, likely to compromise him with the act- 
ing commissaries. But, he concealed it under his cloak, and car- 
ried it into the Tower. 

In all this we may see the way slowly paved for future action. 
Here, without controversy, is proof that the royalist agents were 
plotting, in the end of the year If 94, to remove the Prince — that 
Fenouil, Doisy, Debierne, Gomin, and probably Lienard, were in 
the plot — that meetings were held for consultation in the apart- 
ments of one of the sentinels, who had the responsible post of 
steward, and all they waited for was the formation of some definite 
plan to carry their design into execution. And, now let us turn to 
the state of feeling iu the Convention, and to the action of the 
government respecting the Prince, and see if we can discover any- 
thing which corresponds with the events going on within and 
around the Tower, and any clue to the intrigues of the Marquis de 
Fenouil, and to the meaning of the project to carry the child into 
La Vendue. 

There had been frequent and fierce debating as to what should 
be done with the Prince, when, on the 28th December, Leguinio 
argued, that as there was no hope of quelling tlie royalists while he 
remained in Paris, " measures should be taken to purge the soil of 
the sole vestige of tyranny that remained," and moved, that he 
should be exiled. But, on the 22d January, Cambaceres, on the 
part of the government committees, made a report unfavorable to 
his proposition, taking the ground that the expulsion of tyrants had 
always prepared the way for their restoration. The Convention 



INTRIGITE. 87 

was greatly divided in opinion; but, as the view expressed by 
Cambaceres seemed the wisest, the question was dropped. 

It is not, however, from open action that the designs of such a 
government as the one then ruling France can be derived. Only 
eight days previous to the report of Cambaceres, a treaty had been 
made with Charette; at iNTantes, in one of the secret clauses of which 
the government stipulated to put the young Prince and his sister 
into the hands of the Yendeean leader, on condition that the sur- 
render should be delayed until June 13, 1795.* 

If the reader will connect this with the " certaines intrigues soi- 
disant patriotiques," of Fenouil, and the plot for the young king's 
removal into La Vendue — he will scarcely have the discernment I 
would wish to attribute to him, if he does not perceive the gradual 
working and development of a dtep laid scheme, worthy of the 
intriguing genius of Louis XVIII., a very master piece of Machiavel- 
lian policy, to deceive and overreach both parties. It is not impro- 
bable that Cambaceres and others may have secretly lent their aid 
in carrying out his design. 

We now come to a portion of this history of utmost importance 
in many respects. I allude to the visit of three members of the 
Committee of General Safety, to the Tower, to ascertain the state of 
the child's health. Before, however, we enter on it, let me call 
attention to one of the most important considerations it involves, 
viz. the mental condition of the Prince at the time. 

M. Beauchesne, without formally raising the question or throw- 
ing the subject into the shape of argument — a thing he carefully 
avoids throughout — labors to prove that the mind of the captive 
was not impaired. This position is necessary to give any weight 
to the evidence he adduces of his death. If his reason Was alienated, 

* " Charette, avait signe, le 17 Janvier, dans le petit chateau de la Jaunaie, pres de 
Nantes, un traite, dont les clauses secretes stipulaient la remise entre ses mains du 
jeune Roiet de la Princesse, sa soeur. Le gouvernement republicain avait feint d'ac- 
quiescer a ces conditions, en demandant seulement que la remise des enfans de Louia 
XVI., ne fut effectuee que le 13 Juin, 1795."— BeawcAwne, vol. ii. p. 416. 



88 THE LOST PRINCE. 

then every word which. Lasne and Gomin have put into his month 
is proof of their falsehood. They represent him as not only retain- 
ing his senses, but manifesting to the last the most sprightly and 
vivid intelligence, in conjunction with a fixed heroic determination, 
which savors of the miraculous. 

The Duchess D'Angoul^me, who derived her knowledge from 
Gomin, says her brother's mind " suffered from the effects of the cruel 
treatment that had so long been exercised towards him, and show- 
ed symptoms of increasing weakness;" and again, that " the horri- 
ble treatment of which he was the victim gradually affected his 
mind, and even had he lived, it is probable he would never have 
recovered from the effects of it." Lamartine says — "They had 
brutalized him not only to dethrone him, but to deprive him even 
of his childish innocence and liitmaii intelligence.'''"^ 

On the 26th February, 1794, the commissaries of the Temple, 
Laurent and Gomin, reported to the Committee of General Safety, 
that the life of the prisoner was in imminent danger — and, on 
being asked, " What was the nature of the danger?" they replied, 
"that the litile Capet had tumors on all the articulations^ and 
particularly at the hiees — that it was impossihle to oMainfrom him a 
single word — and that always, whether sitting or laying down, he 
refused all kinds of exercise." When questioned as to the period 
from whence this obstinate silence and systematic immobility 
dated, they said it was since the 6th October, 1793, the day on 
which he had been made to sign a charge of incest against his 
mother. Here let me remark, that Gomin stands directly opposed 
to himself. As one of the commissaries, he afnrmed that it was 
impossible to get a word from him, and, in fact, that he had never 
heard him speak ; and yet, through M. Beauchesne, he has favored 
us with particular accounts of his conversations. 

A committee, consisting of MM. Ilarmand, Matthieu, and Revcr- 
chon, were appointed to visit the prisoner. They found him in a 
clean and well-lighted room, having no furniture but a bedstead, a 

• Lamartine's Girondists, vol. i. p, 300. 



INTRIGUE. 89 

table, and earthen stove. " The Prince," says Harmand, " was 
sitting before a little square table, on which were scattered some 
playing-cards, some bent into the form of boxes and little chests, 
others piled np in castles. He was amusing himself with these 
cards when we entered, but he did not give up his play. He was 
dressed in a sailor's jacket of slate-colored cloth — his head was 
bare." Harmand approached him, but he took no notice. 
He spoke to him, but he looked steadily forward without any 
change in his position. He promised him toys, but he stared with 
steady and vacant indiiference. To all questions, he answered nei- 
ther by gesture, expression, nor word. Baffled in all attempts, 
Harmand now tried peremptory command, which succeeded a lit- 
tle better. "Monsieur, have the goodness to give me your hand. 
He presented it, and I felt, in prolonging my movement up to the 
arm-pit, a tumor at the wrist, and another at the elbow, like knots. 
The tumors were not painful, for the Prince showed no sign of 
their being so. The other hand. Monsieur. He presented it also. 
There was nothing. Permit me, sir, to touch your legs and your 
knees. He raised himself up. I felt the same swellings at the two 
knees under the joint." This mechanical movement of his limbs at 
command was the only indication of sense he showed during 
the whole interview. " He remained on his seat — his look did 
not change a single instant, by the least apparent emotion, by the 
least astonishment in the eyes — he acted as if we were not there 
and I had said nothing." 

His dinner was now brought. He eat without saying anything. 
They threatened if he did not speak, to remove the commissaries 
(Laurent and Gomin), who were kind to him, and send him others 
who might be more disagreeable to him. He neither changed his 
look, nor gave an answer. " Do you wish," inquired Harmand 
"that we should go away ?" There was no reply. 

The deputies began now to question the commissaries, i. e., 
Laurent, Gorain, and the acting commissioner for the day, as to the 
cause of this. " We demanded, if this obstinate silence had been 



90 THE LOST PRINCE. 

really preserved since the day when that monstrous deposition 
against his mother had been violently forced from him. They 
assured us, that ever since that day, the poor child had ceased to 
speak. Bemorse had prostrated Ms understanding.''^* These 
words, preserved by Lamartine, are omitted by M. Beauchesne, 
who inserts three points in their stead, though he pretends to give 
the narrative of Harmand entire. He well knew that a prostra- 
tion of the child^s understanding would be fatal, to all the accounts 
of pointed remarks, and interesting conversations, between the 
Prince and his jailers, which give so much particularity to their 
narrative of the last days and hours of his life ; and, not content 
with omitting the testimony in respect to his aberration of mind, 
accuses Harmand of having exaggerated in his statement concern- 
ing the child's silence. 

Now, it is undeniable that the commissaries, in their first report 
to the Committee of General Safet}^, acknowledged that the Prince 
never spoke even to them — that Harmand and his colleagues could 
obtain from him, no reply or token of sense — that Laurent and 
Gomin acknowledged a second time to them, that he never spoke, 
and had not done so for months — that the deputation justly con- 
cluded, that his understanding was prostrated — that his sister 
believed him to be incurably insane, and that Lamartine repre- 
sents him as deprived of " human intelligence." Of what value, 
then, let me ask, is testimony which proceeds upon an entirely dif- 
ferent hypothesis, and which represents him indulging to the last 
in a lavish garrulity ? 

On the 29th March, 1795, Laurent left the Temple. He was 
tired of his employment, and wished to return to his family", and 
to the care of his private aifairs. He parted with affection from 
the prisoner, whom he had always kindly treated, and in two days 
afterwards, the vacancy was filled by the appointment of Etienne 
Lasne. Lasne, had formerly been a soldier in the Garde 
Francaise ; in 1789, he entered the National Guard ; and in 1791, 

♦ Lamartine, Hist. Restoration, vol. i, p, 308. Beauchesne, vol. IL p. 309. 



INTRIGtnS. 91 

was made captain of grenadiers. "Revolutionary influences," 
says Beauchesne, " had nominated Lasne, as royalist influences 
Lad nominated Gomin, but they both belonged to the moderate 
party." As the Marquis de Fenouil, Gomin, and Debierne, are 
proofs that it was no unusual thing for royalists to appear in 
republican garb — and as M. Lasne's republicanism was confessedly 
of a moderate character, being, probably, of that convenient 
quality which enables a man to do whatever seems best for his 
pecuniary interests — his practical principles must be estimated by 
his actions. 

His republicanism yielded to time, for he was a very loyal subject 
at the Restoration, and, when Mr. Beauchesne first visited liim, in 
1837, had, in his room, many portraits of the royal family, including 
some of the Dauphin. He had sufficient influence with Louis 
Xyni. to induce him to discredit the word of an eminent physician 
like Pelletan. 

As soon as Lasne entered on oflSce, we find indications of a dis- 
position to aid in the escape of the Prince. The keys made a great 
noise in turning in the locks, and he accordingly had them care- 
fully oiled. He also denied the necessity of the doors being closed 
on the landings, and ordered them to be left open. There can be 
no question that these are the very things which would be done by 
a person in his position, anxious to facilitate escape. 

The acting commissaries, however, objected to the doors being 
left open, as they said they were put there to be shut ; and Lasne, 
" Tcnowing that all resistance would he untimely, and could only bring 
suspicion on him,^^ acceded in silence. There was a perfect under- 
standing between Lasne and Gomin, and they continued to act 
from beginning to end in entire harmony. They made mutual 
arrangements to give each other the fullest liberty, and broke up 
every established usage which interfered with this. Hitherto the 
keys could only be used in the presence of both the keepers. They 
were now placed at the disposal of either of them, at any time. 
Instead of the previous severe and silent discipline, they introduced 



92 THE LOST PRINCE. 

music into the tower, and, though unskilled, Gorain played on the 
violin, and Lasne accompanied him with his voice ; all wliioh was 
well calculated to distract attention, and accustom all who might 
entertain suspicion, to noise and commotion in the hitherto quiet 
and monotonous prison. 

We are here reminded, by M. Beauchesne, that the silence of the 
Prince was only relative — in other words, that he could talk when 
and to whom he pleased — and are informed that although he 
observed, for three weeks, an obstinate silence towards Lasne, he, 
at length, yielded to the kindness of his keeper, and, during the rest 
of his life, took pleasure in chatting with him, especially respecting 
the events of his early childhood, before the Eevolution, of which 
he retained a distinct and clear remembrance. " Contrary to his 
Tiabit^^'' this is admitting something, " he theed and thoud him and 
treated him, with familiarity." 

For reasons already given, and for others which will appear as 
we advance, I can yield no credence to these long jocose conver- 
sations, and shall, therefore, merely allude to them for the purpose 
of denying in the strongest manner their probability. They mili- 
tate v/ith everything recorded of the captive, by those whose testi- 
mony can be credited — they indicate a state of mind entirely 
different from what his physical condition would require — they are 
confessed to be exceptions to his usual conduct — and unless, there- 
fore, they rest on evidence, itself above dispute, they deserve to 
have no place in history. 

But as their improbability, though great, is far exceeded by what 
we shall be asked to believe hereafter, I must beg the reader to 
observe that it was three full weeks before Lasne, by dint of the 
most assiduous and unremitting care, could get even a look of 
recognition, or the slightest intimation that his attention was 
appreciated. 

Never since the beginning of the Eevolution was the prospect of 
the royalist party so bright in France as in the spring of the year 
1795. The strife between the two extreme factions in the state, the 



INTRIGUE. 93 

royalists and tlie patriots, was severe and constant — and the former 
obtained everywhere the ascendency. In league with the Giron- 
dists, they became daily bolder, and caused decrees, of which they 
made terrible use, to be passed against them. " They imprisoned 
them," says Thiers, " as accomplices of Robespierre, or as having 
had the management of the public money, without rendering any 
account of it. They disarmed them, as having participated in the 
tyranny abolished on the 9th Thermidor ; or, lastly, they hunted 
them from place to place, as having quitted their communes. It 
was in the south itself that these hostilities against the unfortunate 
patriots were most active ; for violence always provokes equal 
violence. In the department of the Rhone a terrible reaction was 
in contemplation." 

Those who had fled from the country in the year 1793, now 
returned into it by thousands — and so powerful was the influence 
exerted, that Lyons, which had been wholly republican, became 
now, as extreme in royalism. In the chief cities of Switzerland, 
shoals of emigrants collected, ready to re-enter France. The res- 
toration of Louis XVII. was the universal cry.* The priests too, 
who had fled, returned into France, declared that all the ordinances 
performed by those who had taken the republican oath were void, 
and began to rebaptize, remarry, and excite every popular hatred 
against the government. From words and recriminations the roy- 
alists soon came to blows, and, in many parts, blood was shed by 
them, a slavishly as by their enemies in past years. An armistice 
was concluded with Oharette, the Vendeean chief, in the secret 
articles of which, the government at Paris promised to re-establish 
the Roman Catholic worship throughout France, and to restore 
Louis XVII. to the armies of La Vendee and Brittany.f 

Paris was fall of reports concerning the disposition to be made 
of the Prince, whose longer retention in captivity was felt to be 
impossible. Various movements had been made in his favor by 
foreign courts. Spain had a project of making him king of 

* Thiers, vol. iii. p. 252. t Beauchesne, vol. ii. p, 343. 



94 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Navarre. On the other hand, it was aaid that the courts of 
Vienna, Petersburg, and Berlin designed to place him on the throne 
of Poland. There was a general public belief that attempts were 
on the eve of execution to carry him from the Tower. He was an 
object of universal conversation, and everj^thing betokened a crisis. 
Kever, perhaps, in the history of the world, was there a child on 
whom so many expectations and fears were centered — who stood 
in the path of so many ambitions, who had so many potent rivals, 
anxious to remove him out of their way, or who was exposed in 
such perfect helplessness to his enemies. It seems inexplicable, 
that in those times of blood, no one was found to deprive him of 
life. Before the downfall of Kobespierre, it might have been 
effected without leaving a trace behind. Providence, it is all that 
we can say, destined he should survive. 

At this critical moment, we find him in the hands of a royalist 
keeper, placed in his position by an intriguing agent of the Count 
de Provence, who, to effect this end had, with Jesuit policy, 
feigned to be a republican. We see this keeper closeted with roy- 
alists, and are permitted to hear enough of their conversations to 
know that they contemplate his removal from the tower in which 
he is confined. We next find another keeper added to the previous 
one, who, though nominally republican, does everything which 
would be politic were he preparing for his liberation. In the 
French government we perceive men ready to lend themselves 
to anything — anxious, if the Republic survive, to remove the 
child — but equally willing, should there be a change in the tide, to 
court the favor of an usurper. 

Such is the situation of affairs, when the curtain lifts upon the 
scene of mystery, in which the Prince disappears from our sight. 



DISAPPEARANCE. 95 



CHAPTER yil. 

DISAPPEARANOK. 



The thirteenth of June, on which day the Convention had 
covenanted to deliver the royal children into the hands of 
Oharette, rapidly approached. The Marquis de Fenouil, though 
endeavoring to outwit the republican government, was possessed 
of its confidence, and ostensibly acting with it, to overreach the 
Yendeeans. Between him and his creatures in the Temple, there 
was, doubtless, a complete understanding and a concerted plan of 
operations. They could act with greater freedom, because plotting 
against the government under its shadow, with its sanction, and, 
perhaps, with the secret co-operation of some of its members. 
The lax discipline which prevailed in the Temple; the good- 
natured, easy, and unsuspicious course of the keepers towards each 
other and the guard ; the boisterous fiddling and singing, which 
made the stern old walls and vaulted staircase ring with unwonted 
merriment ;— were all admirably contrived to lull watchfulness to 
sleep. " Like master, like men," is a homely but true proverb, and 
if the principal ofiicials in the Temple led a careless, jovial life, it 
is not probable that those on whom less responsibility rested, were 
a whit more alert. The only real difficulty in the way of an 
escape, consisted in the vigilance of the acting commissaries — offi- 
cers, whose term of duty lasted only for a single day, and who, on 
that very account, were apt to be strict and watchful. 

But this was an obstacle easily evaded. The Marquis, who had 
secured the appointment of permanent officials in his interest, 
could easily, when the proper moment arrived, obtain the nomina- 
tion of a royalist acting commissary. That he could do so, is 
evident from the case of Debierne. In agreement, doubtless, with 
a concerted scheme, the keepers were only obeying their instruc- 
tions when, in the beginning of May, 1795, they wrote upon the 



96 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Kegistor of the Tower, " The little Capet is indisposed "—and the 
next day, " The little Capet is dangerously ill, and there is fear of 
his death." It was necessary to go through the formality of an 
especial sickness, in order to arrive at the formality of a pre- 
tended death. On the 6th May, 1795, they were informed that, 
M. Desault, the chief surgeon in France, a man of world-wide renown 
in his profession, had been appointed to take care of the Prince. 

There is no evidence that the physician considered his youog 
charge in any danger, from which there was not an easy escape. 
He examined him long, with great attention, and questioned him, 
without being able to obtain an answer. He expressed in the 
prison, no opinion of his condition, but ordered merely, a decoc- 
tion of hops ; and on his visit the next day, directed, in addition, 
that his tumors should be rubbed with volatile salts. These pre- 
scriptions are as simple as can well be imagined. They indicate no 
anxiety — and this quiet, easy course — hop tea and gentle frictions, 
was continued by Desault to the very last. In his conversations 
abroad, we are told by M. Beauchesne, that he said, that the 
Prince " had the germ of the scrofulous affection of which his 
brother had died, at Meudon ; but this malady had scarcely 
imprinted its seal on his constitution, nor manifested itself with any 
violent symptom; neither vast ulcers, nor rebellious ophthalmia, nor 
chronic swellings of the joints." In the opinion of Desault, and 
his opinion cannot be rejected, the swelliogs on the articulations of 
the Prince's body were not scrofulous. They had been in 
existence ever since his solitary imprisonment ; and, if they were 
Bcrofulous tumors, the disease must, already, have been of long 
standiug, and firmly seated in his constitution. Instead of suffering 
from scrofula, Desault said, he was sinking under decline, occa- 
sioned by confinement, and proposed an immediate transportation 
to the country, hoping that good air, careful treatment, and 
constant attention, would restore him. In a word, "He under- 
took," says the Duchess D'Angouleme, " to cure him.* 

* Filia Dolorosa, p. 245. 



DISAPPEARANCE. 97 

It was with difficulty the child could be induced to take the 
medicine prescribed. The government refused to comply with the 
physician's request for his removal, and hop tea and sal-volatile 
frictions constituted, let me repeat, the whole treatment the child 
received at the hands of Desault. The frictions had no effect in 
diminishing the swellings, and there can be little doubt that conti- 
nued confinement, but not scrofula, would soon have deprived the 
child of life. The only evidence of immediate danger adduced, is the 
testimony of Lasne and Gomin, who are themselves on trial. Both 
M. Hue and Madame Royale were forbidden to see him, so that we 
have none but most suspicious witnesses to prove his condition — 
for no record of Desault's opinion remains. 

We are told that the child gradually became attached to his phy- 
sician, and, towards the last, before he left his apartment, would 
timidly detain him by the skirt of his coat. This incident seems, 
under the circumstances, characteristic and natural. If he had 
any sense at this time, it was just in such acts of shy, sensitive gra- 
titude that he would show it. - 

We now come to the point of mystery.* Up to the 30th May, 

* " On the 11th Prairial (80th May), le Sieur Erieullard, the acting commissary for the 
day, who accompanied Desault, said to him, in going down the staircase, ' The child 
will die— will he not ?' ' I fear it ; but there are, perhaps, those persons in the world 
who hope it,' replied Desault, the last words which he pronounced in the Tower of 
the Temple, and which, though spoken in a low voice, were heard by Gomin, who 
walked behind Erieullard. 

" On the 12th Prairial (81st May), the acting commissary, on his arrival, at nine 
o'clock, said he would wait for the Doctor in the chamber of the child, to which he 
caused himself to be introduced. This commissary was M. Bellanger, painter and 
designer of the cabinet of Monsieur (the Count de Irovence, afterwards Louis XVIII.) 
who lived No. 21 Rue Poissonniere. He was an honest man ; the misfortwne of his 
henefactor — alas, in those sad times he was almost an exception — had not dried up 
the d&votionof his heart. M. Desault did not come. 

" M. Bellanger, who had brought a portfolio filled with his drawings, asked the Prince 
If he liked painting; and, without waiting for an answer, which did not come, the 
artist opened his portfolio, and put it under the eyes of the child. He turned it over, 
at first with indifiference, afterwards with interest, dwelt a long time on each page, 
and when he had finished, began again. This long examination seemed to give some 
Bolace to his sufferings, and some relief to the chagrin which was caused by the 



98 TIIK LOST PRINCE. 

Desault paid his visits regularly, at nine o'clock, Avithout any change, 
either in the patient or in his treatment. On that day, it is assert- 
ed, on the authority of Gomin, he expressed, in a low voice, fears 
for the child's life, when going down stairs, never to return. The 
next day, a new actor appears upon the scene under raost sus- 
picious circumstances. Already, the child was surrounded within 
and without the Temple by royalist agents, who were plotting to 
effect his removal. There now entered another, who loas a creaUire 
and confidant of the Regent^ and devoted to the cause of Ms patron 

absence of his physician. The artist often gare him explanations of the different 
subjects of his collection. The child had at first kept silence, but, little by little, ho 
listened to M. Bellanger with marked attention, and finished by answering his 
questions, 

"In taking the portfolio from his hands, M. Bellanger said to him, 'I much desire, 
sir, to take away one drawing more, but I will not do it if you object.' ' Wliat 
drawing?' said the Dauphin. 'That of your countenance; it will give much 
pleasure, if it will not cause you pain.' 'Will it give you pleasure ?' said the child, 
and the most gracious smile completed his sentence and the mute approbation which 
he gave to the desire of the artist. M. Bellanger traced in crayon the profile of the young 
king, and it is from this profile, that, some days after, M. Beaumont, the sculptor, and, 
twenty years aftei-, manufacturer of Sevres porcelain, executed the bust of Louis XVII. 

"The loth Prairial (1st June), M. Desault did not come again. The keepers were 
astonished at his absence, and the child regretted it. The acting commissary, M. 
Benoist, Faubourg St. Denis, 4, was of opinion that word should be sent to the house 
of the physician, to inquii-e the cause of so prolonged an absence. Gomin and Lasne 
had not yet dared to act according to this advice, when the next day M. Beduult 
Rue de Bondi, 17, who relieved M. Benoist, hearing him on his arrival pronounce 
the name of M. Desault, said immediatelj^, ' Don't wait for him any longer, he died 
yesterday.' 

" This sudden death, under such circumstances, opened a vast field of conjecture 
There is one, which must astonish by its boldness, let us say more justly, by its infamy. 
They dare assert that M. Desault, after having administered a slow poison to his 
patient, had been himself poisoned by those who had commanded the crime. But the 
noble life of M. Desault protects him, without any doubt, against such a calumny. 
Other inventors have not feared to say, that M. Desault did not recognise in the poor, 
sickly one in the Tower of the Temple, the child so full of strength and grace whom 
he had admired more than once, and in a happier dwelling ; and that it was because 
he showed an intention of revealing to the government this substitution, that the 
doctor had been poisoned. This supposition is equally true with the first. M. 
Desault, who had been physician to the royal children, never doubted that his young 
patient was the Dauphin." — BeaucJiesne, vol. ji. 349. 



DISAPPEARANCE. 99 

am.d hmefcuitor—'M. Bellarger, painter and designer of the cabinet 
of Monsieur. It cannot, with semblance of reason, be denied that 
this man was there as agent of the Eegent. And now, let us watch 
his actions. It was usual for the acting commissary to wait the 
arrival of the physician, and go with him and the two guardians 
—who were also styled commissaries of the Committee of General 
Safety— into the chamber of the patient; but M. Bellanger, though 
he arrived precisely at the hour when M. Desault was expected, 
eaid that he would go up at once to the Prince's room, and stay 
there till the physician came. The discipline of the prison was 
relaxed, so that this infraction of rule would occasion no particular 
remark. The physician did not come, and the creature of the 
Regent remained with the child the whole day. He had come 
prepared to stay, and try to gain the affections of the captive. He 
amused him with pictures, and concluded by taking a sketch of 
him. ' When he went away, or how, we are not informed. "What 
was done in the prison that day, besides, has no record. But, 
there was time enough to effect any change, and there were hands 
enough within and without the prison ready to co-operate in 
removing the young captive. There was no spy on their opera- 
tions — no inconvenient physician — no harsh republican commissary. 
All were agreed, keepers, commissary, steward, probably sentinel, 
within — Fenouil, Doisy, Debierne, and who else, we know not, 
without. The child, conciliated and pleased with pictures, and 
dosed for a month with decoction of hops, which I very much ques- 
tion whether Desault ever ordered, would offer no opposition to 
accompanying a stranger. If ever there were a conjunction of men 
and circumstances favorable to the easy and unobserved removal of 
a prisoner, we have them here. But we are left to imagine what 
happened, with probability only for our guide. 

The next day comes, and no physician appears. The guardians, 
according to their testimony, are very much astonished, and the 
child very sad. On the 2d June, the news arrives that Desault 
had died the previous day. Even before the event of the Dauphin's 



100 THE LOST PRINCE. 

illness is known, the sudden death of such a man, at such a time, 
throws all Paris into bewilderment. The public mind feels that 
there is a mystery transacting. It conjectures this, and it conjec- 
tures that; but though its surmises take different shapes, there is a 
rooted suspicion of foul play, and a firm belief that, for some 
reason, Desault has been poisoned. It can scarcely be imagined 
that a careful and skilful practitioner, like Desault, would keep no 
record of his visits to the Prince — no description of his case, his 
symptoms, and the probabilities of his recovery or death. But, no 
such record is found, which creates another strong suspicion that 
his papers were tampered with, and all traces of an inconvenient 
character removed. Had his memoranda been preserved, it 
would, probably, have appeared that the Dauphin was in no 
immediate danger. Desault did not act as if he imagined him to 
be in any. Physicians do not like to assume sole responsibilit}^ in 
such cases. The moment that Pelletan was called to the Tower, 
he asked for a colleague. Desault continued to treat the case, 
quietly, by himself, making no extraordinary visits, giving no 
unusual remedies. He was taken sick, we are told, by M. Beau- 
chesne, in explanation of his death, with ataxique fever, on the 
night of the 29th May. M. Abeille, his medical pupil, who, pro- 
bably, understood his symptoms better than any one else, has 
declared, both in Europe and America, that he was poisoned.* 
But, notwithstanding his asserted sickness on the 29th May, the 
80th found him well enough to visit his patient, as usual, without 
exhibiting any signs of indisposition. Had he been suffering, at 
his last visit to the Temple, under a fever, which in a few hours 
would bring him to the grave, he would have shown some indica- 
tion of his condition ; but, the veracious witness, Gomin, observed 
none, and was at a loss to imagine the reason of his absence the 
next day. 

If his illness increased so much during the 29th that he found 
himself unable to make his usual visit to the Prince, he would, in 

* Percival, p. 165. 



DISAPPEARANCE. 101 

all human probability^ have sent some substitute^ had the child, in 
his opinion, been in immediate danger. A great physician is the 
most faithful of mortals ; and the sense of duty and the esprit du 
corps operate, as in the soldier's or the sailor's heart, to the last 
beat of life. That Desault, even on his death-bed, would volun- 
tarily allow the dying Prince, if such he deemed him, to be 
neglected for forty-eight hours, is impossible. Let the profession 
say whether I am right. In short, the conduct, as well as the 
death, of Desault, are wrapped in impenetrable mystery, and do 
not, in any way, coincide with the hypothesis that he regarded his 
patient in extreme danger. 

At this point there occurs an entire break in the narrative of M. 
Beauchesne. From the time that Bellanger left the Tower, on 
31st May, until June 5, there is no record of anything that 
transpired in the sick chamber, except a remark, requiring no 
great stretch of intellect to coin, that the child felt sad on June 
1st. The space left, at this most critical period, affords ample room 
and verge enough for any new arrangements, and we are not to 
suppose the ingenuity of our friend the marquis, and his accom- 
plices within and without the Temple, was at fault. 

Pelletan, receiving his appointment from the Committee of 
General Safety, on the morning of June 5, went to visit his patient 
at five in the afternoon. He was entirely unacquainted with the 
Prince, and had never seen him. "I found the child," he says, 
" in so sad a state that I demanded instantly that another profes- 
sional person should be joined with me, to relieve me from a 
burden I did not wish to bear alone." The instinctive feeling and 
the ordinary practice of the medical profession immediately displayed 
themselves, in a case fraught with real danger. No sooner did 
Pelletan cast his eyes upon the child he was called on to attend, 
than he cried, " Give me a colleague." Desault convinced, as the 
Duchess D'Angoul^me acknowledges, that he could cure the 
Prince, made no allusion to the subject. 

The sick child in the Temple was now in the hands of a perfect 
stranger. Of such a person the Prince was, according to every 



102 THE LOST PRINCE. 

account, most shy. His timid recognition of Desault, after tlie 
lapse of some weeks' acquaintance, we have seen, as well as the 
difficulty experienced by every one in obtaining, by the most win- 
ning arts, the slightest attention. But, if the authorities on whom 
M. Beauchesne relies are to be trusted, an entire change now came 
over his feelings and conduct. Instead of waiting to be spoken to, 
he began to converse with the strange physician, and displayed 
every sign of a mind thoroughlj^ alive to all that was going on. 

Eogues have seldom the genius of Shakespeare, and truth, there- 
fore, has little to fear from the combinations of falsehood. They 
outrage nature and probabilit}" in their attempts to make a plausible 
case, and though they may deceive some, cannot deceive all. The 
physician, it is said, on entering the apartment, found fault with 
the confined air, and, in a loud tone, proposed to the municipal 
officer on duty, that the child should be carried into another room, 
on which he immediately beckoned M. Pelletan to approach, and 
said, " Speak lower, I pray you ; I fear they will hear you above, 
and I should be very sorry they should learn that I am sick, for it 
would give them much pain." He was removed to another room, 
and during all the time the preparations were being made, his eyes 
followed every motion. 

So many asserted details respecting his feelings, which must be 
purely imaginary, are given, that it is folly to notice them. As 
even M. Beauchesne could perceive the necessity of accounting for 
the remarkable change which is henceforth visible, he ascribed it 
to the sunny room. " He found himself in an airy chamber, with- 
out bars, and ornamented with great white eurtains, which permit- 
ted him to see the sky and the sun. The gay sun of June entering 
by the open window — what a spectacle for a child so long shut up 
in a dungeon!" 

There is some inconsistency in this, for the sky and the sun were 
not such strangers to the eyes of the child who had been for 
months accustomed to a daily walk on the Tower, and the deputa- 
tion who visited him in February, represented his room as 



DISAPI'EARANCE. lOS 

agreeable and well lighted. "Are you pleased with this cham- 
ber?" said Pelletan. "Oh, yes! very much pleased," was the 
ready and animated reply. His heroic resolution of never speaking 
again, must have been long abandoned. On 7th June, M, 
Dumangin, chief physician of the Hospital of the Unity, was 
added to Pelletan, and both of them came immediately to visit the 
child, who, at all convenient occasions, continued to talk and chat, 
with unabated interest, respecting all that was going on around him. 

But we are not left without other testimony of the real scenes 
which the interior of the Temple, at this time, presented. 

"A very respectable tradesman," says Ireland,* in stating the 
prevalent disbelief in Paris at the Eestoration, concerning the 
Dauphin's death, "is my authority for the following narrative, 
who has heard his fatlier, to whom the circumstance occurred, 
repeat it in society fifty times. I shall now give it as nearly as 
possible, in his own words, or, rather, as if the father himself were 
repeating the facts : — 

" ' As I was then a resident in that quarter of Paris where the 
Temple was situated, in my capacity as a Kational Guard, it 
became my turn to attend there as sentry ; when having seen the 
Dauphin about six months before, and being anxions, if possible, to 
behold him again, prior to his death, as the current report was his 
being in a very dangerous state ; I, in consequence, applied to the 
jailer to know whether I might be permitted to occupy the post 
of the guard, destined to keep watch on the Dauphin's apartment, 
there being always one stationed there. To this request, after 
regarding me with an air of doubt, which the frankness of my 
manner dispelled, he acceded under one proviso, that I was not to 
exchange a single syllable with citizen Capet in case he addressed 
me, as th^ infringement of such order would be attended with the 
loss of my head. I promised strict obedience to these commands, 
and immediately entered upon my duty, being forthwith introduced 
into the chamber, where I relieved a brother guard. In thia 

* Ireland's France, p. 27. London, 1822. 



104 THE LOST PrJNCE. 

apartment there were three common chairs, a table, and a low 
bedstead, whereon the Dauphin was lying, but from the position 
of the bed clothes I could not perceive his countenance, and thus I 
continued nearly the space of an hour, only observing, at intervals, 
a motion beneath the covering; at length, however, he pushed 
away the sheet from his head, when I was enabled to consider 
a countenance squalid in the extreme, partially covered with 
blotches, and disfigured by one or two sores ; as he perceived in me 
a stranger, he inquired, in a faint voice, who I was, but the 
peremptory order received, and the heavy price set upon a breach of 
my faith, sealed my lips, upon which I placed my finger, thereby 
indicating the prohibition under which I lay. 

" ' At this he appeared displeased, and after turning about, I 
beheld his body rise until he sat upright in the bed, when nothing 
could exceed my astonishment, on viewing a figure much taller, from 
the head to the bottom of the back, than the Dauphin could possi- 
bly have displayed from what I had seen of him only six months, 
before ; my wonder, however, increased on beholding hira thrust 
his legs from beneath the covering, from which I was enabled to, 
form an estimate of the height of the figure before me, if standing 
erect, when I felt an inward conviction, that however extraordi- 
nary the efli'orts of nature may be in some instances, no such change 
could have taken place in the growth of a youth in the half a year, 
as must have been the ease, supposing the object before me to have 
been the Daupliin. With respect to the physiognomy it was impos- 
sible to identify from thence anything for a certainty, as the fright- 
ful effects of disease, with blotches and sores, had so disfigured the 
countenance, that no conjecture could be liazarded as to what its 
appearance might be in a healthful state ; the lips, like the face, 
were also covered with livid spots, and it appeared to me that 
there were also scabs on the hinder part of the head ; in short, p 
more pitiable object never met the human sight, whosoever it m.ay 
have been, for as to the Dauphin, / am fiilly convinced it was not 
Mm. After remaining some minutes with the legs exposed, and 



DISAPPEARANCE. 105 

seated in a kind of stupefied position, he again replaced them 
beneath the clothes, and covered himself as liigh as the neck, leav- 
ing the face exposed, and turned tovrards me, the eyes being some- 
times shut for a few minutes, vs^hich, when re-opened, were always 
bent upon me, and, in two or three instances, I saw the lips move 
and heard a faint articulation, but nothing was distinguishable. In 
this manner the allotted period of my attendance elapsed, upon 
-which I was relieved by another National Guard from the melan- 
choly dut}^, and descended to the chamber adjoining the grand 
entrance of the Temple, where I found the jailer, who inquired of 
me how I had left the citizen Capet, upon which, after expressing 
my opinion that his death must soon take place, I very foolishly 
remarked that, I thought the youth by far too tall for the Dauphin 
— when he hastily demanded my reason for harboring such a 
doubt. I then explained my having seen the youth six months 
before, and the absolute impossibility of such a change in stature 
taking place within so short a period. To which remark I received 
the following singular reply, " Sick children, citizen, will sometimes 
shoot up very fast ; but I advise you to go home and keep a still 
tongue in your mouth, lest you should grow shorter by the head." 
I immediately left the prison and profited by this advice, as I 
never opened ray lips upon the subject until the settled state of 
affairs in France, left me at liberty to do so without any apprehen- 
sion of danger.' " 

I give this narrative as I find it in the pages of Ireland. It ia 
simple and natural. The time and place at which the work in 
which it occurs was published, and the absence of design in the 
writer to connect it with any theory on the subject, simply record- 
ing it as an isolated fact, which had come to his knowledge, entitle 
it to weight, and will not justify its omission, when presenting 
the evidence of the Dauphin's having survived his captivity. I 
may observe, further, that the external condition of the body, as 
described above, corresponds well with the account of its inter- 
s' 



106 THE LOST PRINCE. 

nal state given in the proces verbal, and is quite agreeable to an 
advanced stage of scrofulous disease. 

The last night of the child's life is thus described by De Beau- 
chesne : — 

" ' How unhappy am I to see you suffer so much,' said Gomin. ' Con- 
sole yourself,' repHed the child, 'I shall not suffer always.' Gomin placed 
himself on his knees to be near him. The child took his hand, and carried 
it to his lips. The religious heart of Gomin (Gomin, of course, is the 
authority) breathed forth an ardent prayer, one of those prayers which 
sorrow wrings from men, and love sends to God. The child did not quit 
the faithful hand wliich remained with him ; he lifted his eyes to Heaven, 
while Gomin prayed for him. It is impossible to describe all that is holy 
and angelic hi this last look of the child. You will ask without doubt, what 
were the last words of the dying child ? You have heard those of his 
father, who, from the height of the scaffold, which his virtue had made a 
throne, sent pardon to his assassins. You have heard those of his mother, 
that heroic queen, who, impatient to quit the earth where she had suffered 
BO much, prayed the executioner to make haste. You have known those 
of his aunt, of that Christian virgin, who, with supplicating eye, when 
they removed her dress, to strike her better, askf^d, in the name of modesty, 
that they would cover her bosom. 

"And, now, shall I dare to repeat the last words of the orphan ? Those 
who received his last sigh have related them to me — and I come faithfully 
to inscribe them on the royal martyrology. Gomin, seeing the mfant 
calm, immovable, and mute, said to him, ' I hope you do not suffer at this 
moment ?' ' Oh, yes, I suffer still, bvit much less, the music is so fine.' 
Now, there was no music in the Tower or its neighborhood ; no noise 
from without came into the Tower where the young martyr lay. Gomin, 
astonished, said to him, ' In what quarter do you hear this music ?' 
' From above.' ' Have you heard it a long time ?' ' Since you have been 
on your knees ;' and the child raised by a nervous movement his falling 
hand, and opened his great illuminated eyes in ecstasy. His poor guar- 
dian, not wishing to destroy this last and sweet illusion, set himself also 
to listen, with the pious desire to hear that which could not be heard. 
After some moments of attention, the child v/as again agitated, his eyes 



DISAPPEARANCE. 107 

flashed, and he cried in indescribable transport, * In the midst of all the 
voices, I have heard that of my mother.' This name falling from the lips 
of the child, seemed to take from him all pain. His contracted eyebrows 
distended, and his look was illumined with that serene ray which gives the 
certainty of deliverance or of victory. His eye fixed on an invisible spec- 
ta,cle — his ear open to the far-off sound of one of those concerts which the 
human ear has never heard — his young soul seemed to blaze out with a 
new existence. Lasne came up to relieve Gomin, who went away with a 
broken heart, but not more unquiet than the evening before, for he did not 
foresee an approaching end. Lasne seated himself near to the bed. The 
Prince looked at him, for a long time, with an eye fixed and dreamy. 
Lasne asked him how he was, and what he wanted ? The child said, ' do 
you think that my sister could have heard the music ? What good it 
would have done her.' Lasne could not reply. A look, full of anguish, 
from the dying child, darted — earnest and piercing — towards the window 
— an exclamation of happiness escaped his lips — then, looking at his guar- 
dian — ' I have something to tell you.' Lasne approached, and took his 
hand— the little head of the prisoner fell on the breast of his guardian, 
who listened, but in vain— God had spared the young martyr the hour of 
the death rattle— God had preserved for himself alone the confidence of his 
last thought. Lasne put his hand upon the heart of the child. The heart 
of Louis XVIL had ceased to beat. It was tieo hours and a quarter after 
mid-day.''' 

As every striking discrepancy between the statements of those 
connected with this affair should be brought out, I will here refer 
to a curious question of time. At half-past two o'clock on 
the afternoon of the 20th Prairial (8th Jane), according to the 
statement of Lasne, the prisoner died. When he had drawn hia 
last breath, Lasne went to inform Gomin, and Damont, the acting 
commissary, who went up into the room. Some time v/as spent in 
arranging the clothes on the bed, in opening the windows, and in 
making the ordinary changes in a chamber of death. After all 
this, Gomin set off to the Tuileries, in a distant part of the city, to 
inform the Committee of General Safety of the event. But, he 
found the session for the day was over. " La stoce est lev4e." 



IjOB the lost prince. 

It was, consequently, impossible for him to make his report to the 
committee. He met, however, in the Tuileries, one of the mem- 
bers, who said to him, " Ke&p the secret until to-morrow ^^'' which 
he accordingly did. Now, the next day after the proems verbal bad 
been made out, Sevestre, one of the Committee of General Safety, 
reported to the Convention the death of the Prince, from '' a swell- 
ing in the right Tcnee and the left wrist^^^ adding, that the Com- 
mittee of General Safety "received the news of the death of 
Capet's son at a quarter past two the previous afternoon." 

How it was possible for them to do this, when the sitting was 
closed before Gomin got to the Tuileries, which must have been at 
least an hour after the death of the Prince, is more than I can con^ 
ceive. In the proces verbal, the decease is said to have occurred 
about three o'clock; in Gomin's certificate of death, exactly at 
three ;and yet the Committee of General Safety heard of it at a 
quarter past two. As in those days there were no electric tele- 
graphs to antedate time, the reader must frame the best expla- 
Bation he can for these facts.* 

But, it now comes out that, on the 8th June, the Committee of 
General Safety were engaged in business of another kind, which 
may serve to explain this difficulty as to time. On the very day 
on which the tragic death-scene of the Prince— -so graphically and 
lugubriously chronicled by Beauchesne— occurred, the Committee 
made no less a discovery than that they had been overreached, and 
that he had escaped. "The great fact of the escape of the 
Pauphin from the Temple," writes the Paris correspondent of the 
*' London Atlas," quoted in the " New York Tribune," of Septem- 
ber 19, " is well established by the archives of the police, where is 
Btill preserved the order sent out to the departments to arrest on 
every high road in France any travellers bearing with thera a 
child of eight years or thereaboats, as there had been an escape of 
royalists from the Temple. This order bears date June 8, 1795— 
the very day of the death of the child in the Temple." That this 

* Sevestre also informs us that Desault died on the 4th June— Beaucheane says ho 
died on the Ist. When did he die ? 



DISAPPEARANCE. 109 

order was rigorously acted on, and that the police over the whole 
of France were on the alert, the reader will hereafter see, when 
he comes to the statement of M. Guerwiere, or Paris, who was 
arrested, shortly after, when travelling in the carriage of the Prince 
de Cond6, under the suspicion that he, then a child of ten years, 
was the Dauphin.*^ 

At the very sitting, therefore, of the Committee of General 
Safety, to which Sevestre affirms that the death of the Dauphin 
was reported by Gomin, who did not arrive until the hour after 
the session was closed — this very police order must have been pre- 
pared. The fact is acknowledged by the historian of the Duchess 
D'Angouleme.f 

But, to proceed with the solemn farce. In the morning of the 
21st Prairial (9th June), two members of the Committee came, at 
eight o'clock, to verify the decease of the Prince. But they made 
no examination of the body, and treated the matter as a thing 
of no moment. "The event," they said, "is a matter of no 
importance. The Commissary of Police in the section will come 
and receive the declaration of the dec6ase---he will certify it, and 
proceed to the inhumation without any ceremony. The Committee 
will give.the necessary orders." 

Four surgeons were appointed to open the body, and visited 
the Temple for this purpose. I give the proces verbal, but 
it is worthy of remark, as indicating the nervous haste with 
which the affair was hurried through, that the year is omit« 
ted from the date entirely, and that, although, at the conclusion, 
reference is made to a day and year on which the instrument was 
written, there ar§ none given, 

^' Pf^ocES VePvBal of the opening of the body of the son of the deceased 
Louis Capet, drawn up at the Tower of the Temple, at eleven o'clock in 
the morning of the 21st Prairial : — 

^'We, the undersigned, Jean Baptiste Eugene Dumangin, Physician-in 
Chief of the Hospital of the Unity, and Philippe-Jean Pelletan, Surgeon- 
in-Chief of the Grand Hospital of Humanity, accompanied by the citizens 
* Percival, p. 170. t Filia Dolorosa, p. 476. 



110 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Nicholas Jf anroy, Professor in the Schools of Medicine at Paris, and Pierra 
Lassus, Professor, of Legal Medicine in the School of Health at Paris; 
whom we have joined to ourselves in virtue of a decree of the Committee 
of General Safety of the National Convention, dated yesterday, and signed. 
Bergoing, President, Courtois, Gauthier, Pierre Guyomard, to the eflect that 
we should proceed together to the opening of the body of the son of the 
deceased Louis Capet, to declare the condition in which we have found it, 
have proceeded. as follows : — 

" ' All four of us having arrived at eleven o'clock in the morning at the 
outer gate of the Temple, we were received by the Commissaries, who 
introduced us into the Tower. We proceeded to the second story into an 
apartment, in the second division of which we found upon a bed the body 
of a child, who appeared to us about ten years of age, which the Commis- 
saries told us was that of the son of the deceased Louis Capet, and which 
two among us recognised to be the child of whom they had taken care for 
some days past. The said Commissaries declared to us that the child died 
the day before, about three o'clock in the afternoon, upon which we sought to 
verify the signs of death, which, we found characterized by an universal 
paleness, the coldness of the whole habit of the body, the stiffness of the 
limbs, the dullness of the eyes, the violet spots common to the skin of a 
corpse, and, above all, by an incipient putrefaction of the stomach, the 
scrotum, and between the thighs. 

" ' We remarked before proceeding to the opening of the body, a general 
leanness, which was that of marasmus. The stomach was extremely 
swollen and puffed with air. On the inner side of the right knee we 
remarked a tumor without change of color to the skin ; and another 
tumor, less voluminous, upon the os radius near the wrist of the left side. 
The tumor of the knee contained about two ounces of a greyish matter, 
pussy and lymphatic, situated between the periosteum and the muscles ; and 
that of the wrist contained matter of the same kind, but thicker. 

" 'At the opening of the stomach, there flowed out about a pint of 
purulent serum, yellow and very offensive : the intestines were swollen, 
pale, and adhering one to another, and also to the sides of the cavity ; 
they were coveted with a great quantity of tubercles of different sizes, and 
wliich presented, when opened, the same matter that was contained in the 
exterior deposits of the knee and of the wrist. 



DISAPPEARANCE. Ill 

" ' The intestines, open throughout their whole extent, were very healthy 
inwardly, and contained but a small quantity of bilious matter. The 
stomach presented to us the same conditipn— it adhered to all the sur- 
rounding parts, was pale outside, covered with small lymphatic tubercles, 
like those on the surface of the intestines ; its inner membrane was sound, 
also the pilorus and the omentum ; the liver adhered by its convexity to the 
diaphragm, and by its concavity to the viscera which it covered, its sub- 
stance was healthy, its volume ordinary, the vessel of the gall bladder was 
moderately filled, with bile of a yellowish green color. The spleen, the 
pancreas, the reins, and the bladder were sound, the epiploon and mesen- 
tery covered with fat, were filled with lymphatic tubercles, similar to those 
of which we have spoken. Similar tumors were scattered over the thick- 
ness of the peritoneum, coveriKg the inward face of the diaphragm. This 
muscle 'was sound. 

" ' The lungs adhered by their whole surface to the pleura, to the 
diaphragm, and to the pericardium ; their substance was sound, and with- 
out tubercles; there were only some near the tracheal artery and the 
omentum. The pericardium contained the ordinary quantity of serosity — 
tlie heart was pale, but in its natural state. The brain and its depen- 
dencies were in their most perfect integrity. 

" ' All the disorders of which we have given the detail, are evidently the 
effect of a scrofulous disease of a long standing, and to which the death 
of the child should be attributed. 

" ' The present proces verbal has been made and signed at Paris, at the 
said place, by the undersigned, at four hours and a half, in the morning of 
the day and year below M^ritten. 

"'J. B. E. Dtjmangin. 
'"P. J. Pelletan. 
" ' Pierre Lassus. 
" ' N. Jeanroy.' 

"This proces verbal was completed in 1817, by M. Pelletan, who made 
the following declaration : — 

" ' T, the undersigned. Chevalier of the Order of the Legion of Honor, 
member of the Pi-oyal Academy of Science, professor of the Faculty of 



n2 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Medicine, certify moreover, that after having cut the cranium transversely, 
on a level with the orbits, to make the anatomy of the brain in the open- 
ing of the body of the son of Louis XVI., which had been assigned to me, 
I replaced the skull-cap of the cranium, and covered it with four strips of 
skin which I had separated, and which I sewed together ; and that, finally, 
I covered the head with a linen handkerchief, or perhaps with a cotton 
cap, fastened below the chin, or at the nape, as is practised in similar 
cases. This dressing will be found, if it be true that corruption has not 
destroyed it; but certainly the skull-cap of the cranium still exista 
enveloped in the remains of those linens, or the cotton cap. 

< " Signed, 

*' ' Pkllktan. 
" ' Paris, 11th Aagtist^ 1817.'" 

M. Pelletan declared still later, that he had set apart the heart 
of the Dauphin in the operation of the autopsy, and had carried it 
away, so as to be able to oifer to the royal family this sad and 
mournful relic of the infant king. 

Beside the proces verbal, the documentary proofs of the death of 
Louis XVII., are the official declaration of Lasne and Gomin, and 
Bigot, a royalist, and certificates -written by the said Lasne and 
Gomin for M. Beauchesne in 1837 and 1840; that of Lasne being 
confided to the scented pages of our author's album. Lasne asserts 
" on his honor, and before God, that the young prince died in his 
arms," at the time and place official]}^ specified, and tells us that, 
having all his life told the truth, he will not lie at its conclusion. 
Both of the keepers unite in affirming the scrupulous exactness of 
our author. That these authentic testimonials of asserted facts may 
make the deepest impression, they are given in the form of fac-simi- 
les, after which M. Beauchesne states that Providence preserved 
the lives of the two old men to give light to his researches, and pre- 
sent, hour by hour, the bulletins of the dying agony. He then car- 
ries us to the grave in the cemetery of I'Eglise Ste. Marguerite, 
expresses " painful perplexity " as to whether the body was interred 
by itself or in a common sepulchre, indicates on a map tho exact 



DISAPPEARANCE. 113 

spot of interment, relates all the elForts which Louis XYIII. made 
to obtain certainty as to the place of burial, and of a certain monu- 
ment which he intended to erect to the memory of the royal mar- 
tyr, but which "n'a point ete execute," and ends with the Latin 
epitaph which was to have been inscribed on the said Mausoleum, 
" Memorise et cineribus Ludovici XVII." 

I would here call attention to one or two singular and suspicious 
facts, which in a subsequent chapter I will consider at greater 
length. The royal ordinance, issued in 1816, for the disinterment 
of the body of Louis XVIL, was without any suflScient reason, 
revoked, as if it were a matter the king was afraid to meddle with. 
Again, orders were issued for the removal of the heart, asserted to 
be in the possession of Pelletan, to St. Denis; but, according to 
Beauchesne (see Appendix), Lasne, who was present at the autopsy, 
declared that he never left the surgeons for a minute, and that 
Pelletan did not take the heart out ; consequently, he was left in 
possession of the sacred and precious relic, which the royal family 
did not deign to receive. Now, it is obvious that either Pelletan 
or Lasne must have lied, and thus either the proces verbal is dis- 
credited, or the testimony of Lasne ; and the whole affair is left in 
uncertainty. For myself, I believe the statement of Pelletan. And 
here, too, the reader is requested to mark that the whole testimony^ 
as to identity^ resolves itself into the truth or falsehood ojf declarations 
made ly Lasne and Gomin. To this, we have only to add that, 
according to Beauchesne, the testimony as to the place of interment 
is equally contradictory ; and that, to say the least, it is singular, 
that in 181T, after Louis XVIII. was on the throne, he should have 
thought it necessary to call in the aid of Pelletan, to make a further 
statement, had it not been felt that the proces verbal was transpar- 
ently defective. 

"We are now prepared to consider the authentic demonstration 
of M, Beauchesne. 

He has proved undoubtedly, that a child died in the Temple, 8th 
June, 1795, and was buried somewhere in the cemetery of I'^glise 



114 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Ste. Marguerite, on the lOtli June, and we will not dispute the 
assertion that at nine o'clock that night, " the air was pure, and 
the aureola of luminous vapor which crowned that fine evening 
seemed to retain and to prolong the adieu of the sun." But I 
give the following reasons for denying entirely that it was Louis 
XYII. who then and there died, and was buried. 

I. The surgeons do not testify that it was the body of the Dau- 
phin which they opened. 

II. Louis XVII. had tumors at all the joints, and particularly at 
the Tcnees. This is a fact, so positively stated by the French officials, 
as to stand beyond reach of contradiction. The tumors were not 
scrofulous, but the result of confinement, and were in the shape of 
knots. 

The proces verbal speaks of only two tumors, one on the inner 
side of the right knee, and the other near the left wrist. 

III. M. Desault, on 6th May, testified that scrofula had scarcely 
imprinted its seal on the constitution of the Dauphin, and that he 
had merely the germ of a scrofulous affection. 

MM. Dumangin, Pelletan, Lassus, and Jeanroy, certify that the 
death of the child, whose body they examined, was the efiect of a 
scrofulous disease, which had existed for a long time^ and the internal 
condition of the body, so minutely specified by them, shows how 
deeply seated the disease was in the constitution, so that the whole 
stomach and intestines were covered with a great quantity of tuber- 
cles, and all the other organs, where the disease could manifest 
itself, were in the state which showed the ripeness of the malady 
imto death. 

IV. All testimony, except that of Lasne and Gomin, 7iay, that of 
Gomin also, in 1795, proves that, mentally, the Dauphin was in a 
condition of imbecilit}^, coincident with his physical prostration, 
lethargic, timid, mute, difficult of access, shy of strangers. 

The boy who died, if the whole account is not false, was exactly 
the contrary, forward, talkative, animated, imaginative. 
Y^ Again, let any physician say whether a child in the mental 



DISAPPEARANCE. 115 

condition in which Desault found the Dauphin, could have had not 
only the brain, but all its dependencies, perfectly healthy, or whether 
its vessels would not have been in a state of temporary derange- 
ment. The examining physicians say, " Le cerveau et ses depen- 
dances etaient dans leur plus parfaite integrite. 

yi. The police records prove the fact of escape. 

Now, unless M. Beauchesne can demonstrate that a body having 
tumors at both knees, both wrists, and both elbows, is the same 
with a body having only two tumors in all, and leaving one knee, 
two elbows, and one wrist, without them ; that a child who, on the 
8th of May, had scarcely a taint of scrofula, but whose diseases were 
caused by confinement, could, on the 8th of the next month, die of 
scrofulous disease of long standing ; that mental characteristics the 
most opposite, are the same, and all the dependencies of an 
enfeebled brain can be in the most perfect integrity, his certificates, 
and his witnesses, and his sentimentality, his tears, unbuilt ceno- 
taph, and Latin epitaph, and even " le coeur de I'enfant," of which 
M. Pelletan says, '' je I'enveloppais en linge, et je le mit dans ma 
poche," and which he afterwards touched and examined, " avec 
attention, plus de mille fois," will be of no avail, and he must be 
forced to confess that a fact may be authentically demonstrated, 
and yet physically and morally disproved. 

The certificates of our author may be correctly copied — his 
reports of conversations, as Lasne testifies, of the most "scrupuleuse 
exactitude" — ^but certificates are pieces of paper with ink upon 
them, and words spoken are sounding breath, and there their 
worth begins and ends, in times and cases on which great issues 
hang, unless consistent with confessed facts, and we have moral 
confidence in those who spoke and wrote. 

But some possible objections may be made to this conclusion. 
It may be said that the number of the swellings was decreased by 
the frictions and applications made by order of Desault, and that 
he may have been mistaken in his opinion as to the nature of the 
Dauphin's malady, or that it increased with an unusual rapidity 



116 THE LOST PRINCE. 

during tlie last month of his life. Such objections can never be 
made by medical men, but it is necessary to guard against the pos- 
sible difficulties of others. If the disease were scrofulous, all 
diminution of the tumors would imply diminution of the disease, 
unless it manifested itself in some other place, of which there is no 
intimation, and thus the first and the last supposition would be at 
entire variance. Again, Desault was the most celebrated surgeon 
of the time in France, and it is not conceivable that he could have 
erred in opinion in a case of such importance ; and, if his opinion 
were correct, that, in the beginning of May, scrofula had scarcely 
imprinted its seal on the constitution of the Dauphin, then it is a 
physical impossibility that it should attain its most advanced stage 
in a month ; for scrofula, as I am professionally advised, is a disease 
most slow in its progress, beginning in the glands, progressing to the 
stin and articulations, and gradually taking possession of the intes- 
tines and vital organs, nor does it destroy life until the mastery 
over the last is complete. It would require years to bring about 
the state of things described, in the proces verbal, as being pre- 
sented at the autopsy of the asserted Dauphin, and the declaration 
of the physicians that the disease was of long standing concedes 
this. 

Now, against evidence of this character, proving by undeniable 
physical differences the non-identity of two bodies, no official 
recognition of identity based on mere casual observation, however 
positively declared, and however formally certified, can be of any 
avail. Bodies change so much after death, in many cases, that 
nothing but the closest examination, with the desire to ascertain 
the truth, can afford grounds for certain, or even a probable 
opinion. Four members of the Committee of General Safety came 
to verify the death of the Prince, but they showed the greatest 
indiff'erence. The officers and sub-officers of the guard of the 
Temple were, we are told, afterwards admitted, but no documen- 
tary evidence is afforded of the fact. Some of them, it is said by 
Beauchesne, without proof, recognized the body of the Prince. 



DISAPPEARANCE. 117 

How they could have done so, when the police were hunting him 
all over France, is somewhat difficult to understand. 

But I am able to neutralize such testimony, if any should be 
inclined to attach importance to it, by proof at least of equal 
weight. Mr. 11. B. MuUer, of Howard street, New York, an emi- 
nent artist, and who authorizes me to refer to him, assured me, in 
the presence of Mr. A. Fleming, that he was well acquainted with 
a person named Auvray, formerly an officer in the household of 
Louis XVI. — and who, though afterwards a republican, still retained 
his attachment for the royal family, and frequently saw the Prince 
in the Temple, both in a civil and military capacity, having pre- 
viously known him well at the Tuileries ; and that the said Auvray 
declared to the said Muller that he was present when the body 
was exhibited to the officers of the Garde National, and that it 
was not the hody of the Dauphin. 

In the " New Jersey State Gazette," of February 11th, 1800, 
published at Trenton, IST. J. there occurs the following paragraph : 
" It is stated in political circles as a fact, that about two years ago, 
a Frenchman who had left his country on account of his principles, 
and resided at Philadelphia, affirmed that he was on the Commit- 
tee of Surgeons who examined the body of the child said to be the 
Dauphin, and to have died of scrofula, in the Temple, but having 
known the Prince v/hile alive, in examining the face of the corpse 
(contrary to positive instructions) he perceived no resemblance, and 
was convinced that som.e artifice had been used to preserve the life 
of the young Prince. 

"This circumstance is related by gentlemen of credit, who 
received it two years ago from the surgeon who was present at the 
dissection, and is therefore highly confirmatory of the recent 
rumor that, Louis XVII. was really saved from the prisons of the 
National Convention by an artifice of Sieyes." 

There are several discrepancies in this statement, though it is 
probably substantially true. I have never heard that either of the 
four physicians officially employed at the autopsy were in this 



118 THE LOST PRINCE. 

country. But M. Abeille, the pnpil of Desault, who would be 
likely, as well as his master, to know the Dauphin, was in America, 
and declared openly his belief in the Dauphin's existence, and in 
the murder of Desault. He probably may have been admitted to 
the apartment under the circumstances described, though not in an 
official capacity.* 

It may, however, be mentioned in this place, that Charles 
Lafond de Savines — ex-Bishop of Yiviers, a man of learning, 
honesty, and ability, though he had embraced French revolutionary 
principles, till convinced, by the events, of their pernicious conse- 
quences, and who became the chief advocate of Hervagault, the 
first of the Pretenders, was mainly influenced by what he heard 
from the four physicians, " He was more convinced that the 
alleged Dauphin was really the brother of the Duchess of 
Angouleme from the fact that he, the bishop, liadj conve7'sed with 
the surgeons who had been summoned to open the body of a 
child, but that they had not recognized it, nor were able to 
pronounce upon it as that of the Son of Louis XVI."t 

I therefore meet hearsay with hearsay, neither being legal evi- 
dence, and one just as good as the other. 

The evidence adduced renders it, I think, certain that 
Louis XVII. was removed from the Temple after his last interview 
with Desault — and another boy of about the same age, in the most 
advanced stage of scrofula, introduced in his stead — while Desault 
himself was murdered. 

Between May 30th and June 1st, there were only four persons 
who are said to have had any intercourse with the Prince, Desault, 
Bell anger, Lasne, and Gomin. The first, who knew the Dauphin 
intimately, and, as a noble and good man, could never have been 
brought to testify that he was dead when he knew him to be 
alive, died suddenly, as all Paris suspected, of poison, on 1st June. 
Bellanger was alone in the Prince's room for hours on 31st May, 
under circumstances which show that he was seeking to gain the 

* Percival, p. 165. t Memoirs of the Duchess D'Angouleme, p, 889. 



DISAPPEARANCE 119 

affections of the child. The keepers in the prison, placed there by 
an emissary of Louis XVIIL, present ns with the very combination 
of instruments necessary for the removal of the child. 

The precise mode by which the death of Desault was accom- 
plished, or the agents, may never be known, but I think tliere will 
be few to deny the extreme probability that he was poisoned* 
Certainly, death never occurred more opportunely. He knew the 
Dauphin well, and was convinced of the identity of the patient he 
was attending with the son of Louis XYI. 

Had he visited the Temple after M. Bellanger had removed the 
Prince, he would have at once detected and exposed the imposition 
that had been practised. It would have been impossible to obtain 
from him a proces verbal, stating that Louis XVII. was dead when 
he knew him to be alive, or even an indefinite document, of the 
character furnished by Pelletan and his colleagues, which would, in 
fact, from him have been worthless. They might shelter themselves 
under the plea of personal ignorance. He could not do so ; and 
had he violated the principles of his moral nature, and disgraced 
himself in the eyes of the profession and the world, by the lame 
non-committalism that the commissaries assured him, that the dead 
body Was that of the Dauphin, no one would have believed him, 
and the deception would have immediately recoiled on the heads of 
its contrivers. Nor would it have answered to have dismissed him 
and appointed other examining physicians in his place, for the 
world would immediately have asked. Why is this? Why keep 
away from the body the man who knows the Dauphin, and substi-^ 
tute others who do not know him? A crisis had evidently 

* De Quincey, who has pronounced in the first volume of his autobiographical 
sketches, a favorable opinion of the evidence adduced in my articles, in " Putnam's 
Magazine," expresses some hesitation on this point. I am inclined to think, that 
further reflection will induce him to change his opinion. It is, indeed, an act abhor- 
rent to the thought — but the times of the Revolution were not ordinary times, and 
men were so accustomed to bloodshed, out of mere caprice, that I cannot conceive 
they would find any difficulty in murdering even " a celebrated physician," when the 
crown and destinies of France were at stake — VideAppendke JB. 



120 THE LOST PRINCE. 

arrived in those unscrupulous and bloody days, when either 
Desauit must die, or the combined treachery of two hostile fac- 
tions must be exposed, and all their plans and contrivances, and 
hopes for the future, come to naught. Can we think the moving 
agents in this dark drama would hesitate a moment between mur- 
der and utter discomfiture, or that they would lack the instruments 
to accomplish their resolves. 

As to Lasne and Gomin, if my reasoning on the evidence be sus- 
tained, no other sentence can be passed on them than that they lied 
knowingly to the end, and the solemnity of their falsehood is on a 
par with the credulity of M. Beauchesne. Perhaps they were 
taught to regard it as a religious duty thus to act, and superstition 
was strengthened by habit, worldly interest, and the too natural 
desire to preserve consistency to the last. It is not improbable also, 
that while they found silence or falsehood lucrative, they knew that 
truth would be attended with the forfeiture of life. (Appendix 0.) 

Let me say a few words, before I conclude this chapter, as to 
the treaty with Charette. It seems evident that, in the contest of 
chicanery, the republicans were outwitted by the Regent and his 
agents — as the Vend^eans were duped by both. The Convention 
never designed to fulfil their stipulation, but merely to gain, time ; 
and a pretended death was necessary to cloak their breach of faith. 
What they intended to do with the Frince, is beyond coujecture. 
Certainly they had no expectation that he would escape their 
hands. The Vendeean treaty was just the thing to afibrd scope 
for every species of intrigue. The agents of the Regent in Paris 
were corresponding at tlie same time both with Charette and the 
government, and got the better of both — forwarding the ratifica- 
tion of the treaty to please the Vendeeans, countermining it to 
gratify the Convention ; and, in the confusion into which everything 
was finally thrown, they advanced the ambitious designs of their 
master, by removing the lad from the clutches of both parties. In 
days when life was so rapidly sacrificed, and many of the royalist 
intriguers perished in the midst of successive conspiracies, it may 



DISAPPEARANCE. 121 

have easily happened that most of the prominent actors in the 
removal of the Prince died upon the scaffold. 
On the whole, the matter stands thus : — 

1st. There is no shadow of pretence that Louis XYII, died in 
the Temple, at any other time than June 8, 1795, or that any other 
body was the body of Louis XVII. than that opened by M. Pelle- 
tan, and described in the proces verbal. If he did not die at this 
time, and if the body in question was not his, then it is conceded 
that he did not die in the Temple. 

2d. The only evidence adduced to prove his death is that of Lasne 
and Gomin. If that fail, there is utter absence of proof. But, their 
testimony is not reliable, 1st. Because they were interested parties. 
2d. Because a great portion of their statement is evidently false— 
inasmuch as they represent a person to have talked and been in his 
senses, who is known to have been devoid of reason, and from 
whom one of them acknowledged it was impossible to extract a 
word.* Probability is, therefore, against their credibility— and 
there only remains a naked possibility, that they spoke the truth in 
•this instance. Such is one side of the question. 

3d. As it is conceded, in the premises, that the body described in 
the proems verbal is that of the boy who died on the 8th June, 
1795, it is physically impossible— as explained in this chapter— that 
this individual could have been Louis XVII. ; and, therefore, the 
possibility in favor of the truthfulness of Lasne and Gomin is anni- 
hilated, and it is evidently demonstrated that Louis XVIL did not 
die in the Temple. In addition, there are a cloud of collateral cir- 
cumstances, all tending to establish the same result, the half of 
which are not yet exhibited. 

What is remarkable, in this case, is that, circumstantial evidence 
breaks down and brings to naught seemingly direct testimony, 
and shows that those do not widely err who attribute to circum- 
stances, undoubtedly proved, a greater power in the development of 

♦ Ces officiers municipaux (Laurent and Gomin) repondent—quHl etait impossible 
de lui arracher une parole.— Beauchesne, vol. ii, p. 299. 

6 



122 THE LOST PRINCE. 

truth, than to verbal testimony. Facts cannot lie. Interested men 
may. In this instance, you might bring a thousand witnesses to swear 
to the identity of the dead body with tliatof Louis XYIL, without 
affecting my conclusion, because, while their testimony, if unim- 
peachable on the ground of veracity and sincerity, might be 
resolved into mistake arising from physiognomical resemblance, it 
could with irresistible cogency be said to them — you swear that 
two bodies are identical, but they are known to be in entirely dif- 
ferent conditions ; and, therefore, you must speak false or be in 
error, unless you can prove that different things can yet be the 
same. In a celebrated criminal case, witnesses swore they saw a 
person walking in the street who was at that moment a dismem- 
bered corpse. It is easy to multiply proofs that Louis XVII. did 
not die in the Temple; but, I need nothing more than a compa- 
rison of Desault's opinion with the proces verbal, to satisfy my own 
mind. Those who do will find it in the police records and the 
acknowledgment of the Frencli government. 



CHAPTEPw VIII. 

FTJNEEAL SOLEMNITIES AND DRIED HEAET. 

The death of Louis XVII. was officially declared. The proc^ 
verbal of the autopsy was published. His death was inscribed on 
the minutes of the Convention, and on the register of the section. 
The room in which he had been confined was empty. A funeral, 
said to be his, had taken place. Still the public mind was not 
satisfied. There was a general beUef that the Prince was not dead. 
The mystery and contradiction, which hung over everything con- 
nected with the alleged event, created an impression of foul play 
never removed. 

One thing alone was certain. He was not to be found. He had 
disappeared. He had been got rid of. The desire of the Conven- 
tion was accomplished. The treaty with Charette was evaded. 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 123 

The long ambitious dream of the Count de Provence seemed also 
nearly realized. He was now Louis XVIII. Between him and the 
throne there was now no known barrier of prior hereditary right. 
The nominal monarchy was vested in him, and the times appeared 
peculiarly favorable for the restoration of royalty. The excesses 
of the Eevolution had produced disgust, and there was an ardent 
desire for the establishment of a more stable government than the 
Kepublic could offer. 

On his accession, Louis XYTIL issued a proclamation to the 
people of France. It is a curious document, and well deserves 
attention. Its length prevents my giving it entire, but in the 
present historical inquiry it cannot be passed without notice. In it 
the long repressed impatience of an ambitious mind, chafing under 
a sense of its own importance, breaks out in despite of all politic 
considerations. 

" LOUIS, BY THE GRACE OF GOD, KING OF EEANCE AND NAVAREE. 

" To all our subjects^ greeting: — 

" In depriving you of a king, whose whole reign was passed in cap- 
tivity, but whose infancy, even, afforded sufficient grounds for beheving 
that he would prove a worthy successor to the best of kings, the impene- 
trable decrees of Providence, at the same time that they have transmitted 
his crown to us, have imposed on us the necessity of tearing it from the 
hands of revolt, and the duty of saving the country, reduced by a dis- 
astrous revolution to the brink of ruin. 

" Long^ too long^ have we had to deplore those fatal circumstances which 
imperiously prescribed the necessity of silence ; but now that we are allowed 
to exert our voice^ atterid to it.'''' 

This is a strange sentence. What fatal circumstances had impe- 
riously prescribed the necessity of silence ? The existence of Louis 
XVII. , and the limited, uncertain, and unacknowledged powers of 
the Count de Provence. He could only speak as Regent. In that 
capacity he had found his voice was but little heeded by those who 



124 THE LOST PRINCE. 

knew liis ambition, and disliked or feared him, or who had ambi- 
tious designs of their own. He could not address France from the 
position of self-inherent authority which belongs to one who 
stands in unquestioned possession of hereditary right, wherever 
that right is acknowledged to reside in any one. He had been a 
self-appointed regent, not nominated by the late king's will, not 
elected by the royalist party — and the adherents of the monarchy 
could all takei their own stand, and make their owm terms, inde- 
pendently of him. Coiide could manage his forces as he pleased, 
without consulting the Regent. Tlie Count D'Artois, at the 
British camp, i)aid him but a nominal submission, followed his 
own plans, and intrigued for his own interests. Charette and the 
Yend6an3 did not acknowledge him as Regent. The royalist 
leader fought in the name, and for the sake of the legitimate king, 
Louis XYII. And could he have obtained, in accordance with tho 
treaty, possession of the person of his sovereign, wliat would he 
have cared for the Regent Provence ? He would have struggled 
for the restoration of monarcliy on his own terms, and in his own 
way. The head-quarters of the royalists would have been trans- 
ferred from Verona, or wherever the Count do Provence held his 
court, to the camp at La Vendde ; and the Regent, if he desired to 
exercise any control, must have appeared, as a subordinate, in tho 
midst of a fierce insurgent army, and complied with the wishes of 
its chief. 

All this was, to the last degree, galling to the proud mind of Louis 
XVHL And now he breaks out with the confession, "Long, too 
long, have we had to deplore." Deplore what ? I can see but one 
answer. The continued existence of Louis XVH., who obstinately 
persisted in dragging out an imprisoned life in the Temple, to the 
detriment and impediment of his successor. " But now that we are 
allowed to exert our voice, attend to it." Allowed, by what? By 
the death of that intaut king, whose crown, by the impenetrable 
decrees of Providence, had been transferred to the Regent. 

Had tho proclamation of Louis XVHL been the composition of 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 125 

a friend, or a minister, no sentence of this kind would have laid 
bare his l)eart. It was profound policy in Talleyrand to commit to 
a secretary the composition of his despatches, that his judgment 
might not be swayed by the natural egotism of an author. But 
Louis Xyill., vain of his literary acquirements, prided himself, in 
every crisis of his fate, in penning every important document him- 
self; and, on this occasion, joy at deliverance from the embarrass- 
ments of a regency was too great not to find vent in words. 

In a subsequent part of the proclamation, he expresses a somewhat 
similar feeling. " In those empires," he says, " which have attained 
the highest pitch of glory and prosperity, abuses most generally pre- 
vail ; because, in such states, they are the least likely to attract the 
attention of those who govern. Some abuses had, therefore, crept 
into the government of France, which were not only felt by the 
lower class of the people, but by every order of the State. The 
deceased monarch, our brother, and sovereign lord and master, had 
perceived and was anxious to remove them. What Louis XYI. 
could not efiect, we will accomplish." 

Here again he involuntarily gives expression, in the midst of 
words of loyalty and affection for his brother, to feelings which 
had long engrossed his mind — and justifies all that history says of 
his brother's incompetency, fostering expectation of his own ele- 
vation. Had he tried, he could scarcely have more effectually 
disclosed, than in this proclamation, his sentiments towards the 
unfortunate princes whose fatal dignity descended on him. 

This document, however, as a whole, though labored and pomp- 
ous, like everything else which proceeded from his pen, was not 
unsuited to the occasion. He depicts in strong colors the miseries 
of revolutionary France, the social advantages which the country 
would derive from a return to her ancient institutions, admits the 
necessity of reform, to adapt the institutions of the country to the 
intelligence and wants of the age, promises reward to the royalists, 
mercy to the republicans — denies, in strange inconsistency with hia 
known sentiments and previous expressions, all feelings of 



126 THE LOST PRINCE. 

ambition, and ends by declaring his hopes for the future, and 
lavishing praise on the army of Conde. 

One of the closing sentences shows the strong expectations he 
cherished of effecting a restoration. " Misfortune has removed the 
veil which was placed before your eyes, the harsh lessons of expe- 
rience have taught you to regret the advantages j^ou have lost. 
Already do the sentiments of religion, which show themselves, 
with eclat, in all the provinces of the kingdom, present to our sight 
the image of the glorious ages of the church ; already does the 
impulse of your hearts, which brings you back to your king, 
declare that you feel the want of being governed hy a father.'''' 
Louis XVIII. could readily apply balms to any feelings of remorse 
which might at times disturb him, and believe that the end sancti- 
fied the means — that the weakness pertaining to a contested 
regency, in troublous times, and the dissipation of authority, con- 
sequent on the absence of one acknowledged head, imperatively 
demanded the politic usurpation of authority by one competent to 
govern. The French nation needed afatlier. Could it find one in" 
the embecile captive of the Temple ? — and though, both by his age 
and inability, the practical duties of sovereignty must devolve on 
some one else, a regency would leave the door open for perpetual 
resistance to authority and the strivings of ambition. The shortest 
and easiest way for the Regent was to cut the Gordian knot — and 
by making himself the sole source and fountain of legitimacy and 
right in the kingdom, to consult the common weal, while he 
advanced his own individual power. 

The asserted death of Louis XYIL led necessarily to the libera- 
tion of Madame Royale, his sister. There was no longer any 
object or policy in retaining her as a captive. The press took up 
the unfinished work of Charette. Petitions and addresses poured 
into the Convention on all sides. Deputations from distant parts 
of the country presented themselves in Paris, to pray for the 
release of the last remnant of the unfortunate family of Louis XVI 
Concession to public opinion cost nothing, and was an escape fron 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 127 

embarrassment. But a pecuniary ransom offered by Austria was 
rejected, and the more popular measure adopted of exchanging the 
Princess for certain representatives and other official persons, whom 
the fortune of war had thrown into the hands of that power. 

Previous to her release, however, care was taken to communi- 
cate the intelligence that she was now alone on earth, and Madame 
de Chanteraine was commissioned to perform the task. " Madame," 
she said, " has no parents." " And my brother ?" was the imme- 
diate question. "No brother." "And my aunt?" " is'o aunt." 
"All is finished!" was her pathetic exclamation. Her situation 
was gradually ameliorated. Madame de Mackau and the former 
governess of the Dauphin, Madame de Tourzel, were permitted to 
visit her, with Madame de Chanteraine. 

Louis XVIII. employed M. Hue to communicate his wishes to 
the Princess. "He hired," says Lamartine, "one of the windows 
which overlooked the garden, where he used to sing like Blonde!, 
the servant of another royal captive, consolatory lays to the 
daughter of his sovereign. By means of signals, he succeeded in. 
putting her in possession of a letter from her uncle, to which the 
princess sent a reply by the connivance of the commissioners {i. e. 
Lasne and Gomln), who shut their eyes on the occasion. Charette 
also transmitted to her, through this medium, the wishes and devo- 
tion of the army." 

We here stiii find the agents of Louis XVHI. holding communi- 
cation with the inmates of the Temple, through the connivance of 
the soi-disant republican jailers, and, at the same time, maintain- 
ing intercourse with Charette. Some time elapsed before the 
necessary negotiations for the exchange with Austria were 
concluded, and it was not until the night of December 18th, that 
the princess left the Temple. Gomin accompanied her — and from 
him she derived confirmation of her brother's death. Surrounded 
by such influences she had composed, in the tower of the 
Temple, previous to her release, the account of the captivity of 
her family and the death of Louis XVH., so frequently appealed to 



128 THE LOST PRINCE. 

as direct evidence, whereas her testimony, at this time, simply, 
resolves itself into that of Louis XYIIL, Lasne, and Gomin. 

At a subsequent period, as I will hereafter show, the true secret 
of his fate was communicated to her, and she was made acquainted 
with the fact that, instead of having expired in tlie Temple, her 
brother was living in America. On 25th December, the exchange 
was consummated at Huningue, and on 9th January, 1796, she 
arrived at Vienna, where she remained for some time in the enjoy- 
ment of the hospitalities of the imperial court. Her travelling 
companion had been Madame de Soucy, a confidante of Louis 
XYIII., but, who, in consequence of the rivalry which arose 
between the house of Austria and the exiled Bourbons, in seeking 
her hand, was compelled to leave her. The emperor, anxious to 
unite the daughter of Marie Antoinette to the Archduke Charles, 
viewed with suspicion the appointment of Madame de Soucy. Her 
dismissal, however, was attended with no beneficial result to his 
wishes, and Madame Eoyale evinced her preferences for the Duke 
D'Angoul^me, to whom it was the policy of Louis XVIII. that she 
should be united. " I am, before all things; French," she said to 
the emperor, " and consequently in entire subjection to the laws of 
-France, which, from my childhood have rendered me alternately 
the suject of the king, my father ; the king, my brother ; and 
the king, my uncle ; and I will yield ohedi&nce to the latter 
loTiate'cer he the nature of his commands.'''' "I remained inflexi- 
ble," she says, " constantly making reference to the will of the 
king, my uncle."* 

Louis XVIII. was, at that time, sojourning at Mittau, where the 
Czar Paul had afforded him a refuge. Through the intercession of 
the latter with the court of Vienna, the princess was released, and 
arrived at Mittau, on 4th June, 1799. On the 10th of the same 
month she was married to the Duke D'Angoul^rae. " The 
affianced pair," says the historian of the daughter of Louis XVI., 
" were calmly happy, and yet there had been no wooing. The 

* Memoirs of the Duchess D'Angoulfirae, p. 263. 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 129 

ceremony was the result of a political combination."* In all his 
wanderings, the king kept by him the prospective successors to his 
throne, whose affections, feehngs, interests, and views became 
naturally identified with his own. Over the duchess he exercised 
an almost despotic control. 

The industry and zeal of the agents and intriguers of Louis 
^XVIII., who assumed also the title of the Count de Lisle, were 
only increased by his nominal accession to the crown. The whole 
of their plots, conspiracies, and correspondence is wrapt in such 
mystery, that it seems impossible to distinguish clearly the true 
from the false— what they did, from what they only pretended to 
do. But from first to last, they were thoroughly unprincipled. 

In La Vendee, the contest for the Restoration was the result of 
an heroic passion. A species of religion pervaded all ranks, 
prompting a willing surrender of property and life for the sake of 
a beloved cause. But the partizans of Louis XVIIL, with few 
exceptions, were actuated by purely mercenary motives, and con- 
tinued their conspiracies against the internal peace of France, that 
they might draw their accustomed stipend. 

The year 1T96 witnessed the death of Oharette, who was taken 
prisoner and shot — manifesting to the last a heroism worthy of his 
name and cause. 

From the suppression of the war in La Yendee, all interest in 
counter-revolution ceases. It is impossible to respect those whose 
object is money — whose weapons are intrigue — and who work in the 
dark. It is equally foreign to my purpose to chronicle the suc- 
cessive efforts and systematic chicanery, through a series of years, 
by which they sought to impose upon France a government daily 
becoming more distasteful to the people, as the military triumphs 
of Bonaparte gave a new object to the popular enthusiasm. 

France was now under the power of the Directory, which was 
a gradual preparation for still more concentrated authority ; and 
the certainty that the government of five was only an introduction, 

* Memoirs of the Duchess D'Angouleme, p. 273. 

4*- 



130 THE LOST PRINCE. 

in some shape, for the government of one, gave an impetus to the 
intrigues of the royalists, which sometimes were on the hrink of suc- 
cess. Under the protecting shadow of the Directory, the Empire 
grew gradually up, in the person of the victorious chief, who gave 
the principal eciat to the Republic in its final forms. With super- 
stitious confidence in his destiny, he steadily and sternly resisted 
all overtures to cast his sword into the scale of royalty — while 
Pichegru, and, perhaps, Moreau, listened to offers tempting to all 
ambitions but the highest. 

The 18th Fructidor (September 4, 1797) witnessed, however, 
the death-blow to the present hopes of the royalists; when the 
Directory, by a bold coup d^etat^ excluded from the legislature the 
deputies of forty-eight departments — banished forty-three members 
of the Council of Five Hundred, and eleven of the Council of Ancients. 
Deprived of all influence in the government of the Republic, the 
royalists sank into an insignificant faction. By petty conspiracies 
they might give work to the police — or, by pretended or exagge- 
rated intrigues, draw subsidies from England — but were utterly 
powerless to disturb the country, in the presence of the gigantic 
influence and reputation of Bonaparte. His course of empire must 
be run before a sane word could be lisped for the dethroned Bour- 
bons. Rising first into power soon after the disappearance of the 
child, he seems, like a gigantic storm cloud, thrust between Louis 
and the crown. 

The Count D^Artois retired to Great Britain, and divided his 
time between the Palace at Holyrood, and his residence in London 
— except when absent, on brief intriguing excursions, to the conti- 
nent. He had become far less obsequious to Louis XVHL, and 
his plots and manoeuvres had an individual bearing. He designed, 
if an opportunity offered, favorable to the restoration of royalty, ro 
throw himself into France and forestall his brother in the race of 
popular favor. 

In the meantime, the king, driven from one place to another, by 
the current of events, still preserved, under every mutation of for- 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 131 

tune, the mock majesty of external state, which, but for his ultimate 
elevation to the throne, would have shown him to posterity in tho 
light of a monomaniac* His court was transferred successively 



* " Surrounded by his two young nephews, the Dukes D'Angouleme and Berry, his 
. niece, his ministers, his great officers, his courtiers, his friends, his captain of the guards, 
the Dukea de Villeguier and Fleury, Count D'Avary, Count de Cosse, Commandant of 
his Swiss Guard, the Marquis de Jancourt, the Duke de Vanguyon, Marshal de Cas- 
tres, by his gentlemen, his almoners, and by all the appendages of the Church and 
the Court which he included in his suite, he still represented in miniature the showy 
royalty of Versailles. Differing from Dionysius of Syracuse, who taught children at 
Corinth, he only knew the business of a king, which he exercised even among the peasants 
of Brunswick. It might be said that this long exile was only the rehearsal of a reign. 
The same solemnity presided at every act and every step he made. The ceremonies 
of worship, the levees, the councils, the public dinners, the assemblies, the play, were 
all assigned to their respective hours, with the uniform etiquette of the palace. From 
thence he conferred powers on his commissioners in the provinces, and withdrew 
them, as he thought fit, reigning, in idea, over the map of his dominions, which 
alw.ays lay open before him. lie encouraged the armies at a distance by proclama- 
tions, and the chiefs by a smart saying. lie wrote to Marshal Broglie in a style full 
of epic allusions about his son, who had distinguishedhimself on the Rhine: — 'Ancient 
chroniclers inform us that the Cid was the last of the sons of Don Diego de Bivar, 
and that he surpassed him, in the opinion of all Spain. Adieu, my marshal.' His 
costume was that of the old regime, absurdly modified by the alterations which time 
had introduced in the habits of men. He wore velvet boots, reaching up above the 
knees, that the rubbing of the leather should not hurt his legs, and to preserve, at 
the same time, the military costume of kings on horseback. His sword never left his 
side, even when sitting in his easy chair — a sign of the nobility and superiority of 
arms, which he wished always to present to the notice of the gentlemen of his king- 
dom. His orders of chivalry covered his breast, and were suspended with broad blue 
ribbons over his white waistcoat. His coat, of bhie cloth, participated by its cut in 
the two epochs whose costumes were united in him. Two little gold epaulettes shone 
upon his shoulders, to recall the general, by birth, in the king. His hair, artistically 
turned up, and curled by the hairdresser on his temples, was tied behind with a black 
silk ribbon, floating on his collar. It was powdered, in the old fq,shion, and thus con- 
cealed the whiteness of age under the artificial show of the toilet. A three-cornered 
Jiat, decorated with a cockade and a white plume, reposed on his knees or in his 
hand. He seemed desirous that ceremonial should command respect through aston- 
ishment. He generally continued in a sitting posture, supported on the arm of a 
courtier or a servant." — Lanutriine. 



132 THE LOST PRINCE. 

from Yerona to Blankenbourg, Mittan, Warsaw, and, a second time, 
to Mittau. rinally, in 1807, he took refuge in England. 

For a long time he retained the chimerical hope of reducing 
Napoleon to be the architect of his throne. But the great captain 
— though he justly despised him — to rid himself of the continual 
conspiracies of the royalists, made overtures to the king for the 
renunciation of his title to the crown — a proposition which, with 
verbal dignity that never failed him, he declined. The theatrical 
pomp and circumstance of his life were somewhat modified by the 
bracing republican air of England, and he gradually abated the 
mimicry of inexistent power, in which his puerile mind delighted. 
"With the ken of a political prophet, and the patient, egotistic arro- 
gance of a fatalist, he looked forward, even under the empire, 
against which he, as usual, protested, for the restoration of the 
kingdom. 

The climax of IsTapoleon's power came at length — -and then its 
descent and obscuration. Disaster followed disaster. The image 
•which had filled the world, stricken on its feet of clay, at length 
grovelled in the dust. Napoleon was no founder of a dynasty.* 
Had he died in the Tuileries, and been succeeded by his son, 
loyalty — like a plant growing on the grave of the Bourbons, 
and bearing old heroic fruit — would have twined around the 
column of the empire, and rendered glorious, and venerable, and 
stable, the stately, but newly erected structure. But it was other- 
wise ordained. As the long anticipated moment for the Bourbons 
came more distinctly in view, the rivalry of the brothers increased 
in a manner which shows that D'Artois felt he had as much right 
to the throne as Louis XYIII. " My brother," said the latter, 
*' contests and almost devours me for the attainment of this reiga 
before it is assured to either." 

Let us now pass rapidly over the interval. In the early part of 
the year 1814 the Count D'Artois entered France, and assuming the 

* Inaugural Address of Napoleon III. 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 133 

title of Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, took measures for the 
restoration of the Bourbons on the downfall of Napoleon, which 
appeared certain. He was strongly inclined to negotiate for himself. 
Great mistrust existed between him and Louis XVIII., not compatible 
with an assured hereditary title in the king ; and I shall hereafter 
sliow that the Count D'Artois was well acquainted with the exist- 
ence of his nephew. Feeling, therefore, that, in point of fact, the 
legitimate claim to the throne was vested in neither, he would 
be naturally inclined to dispute a possession which, if hereditary, 
could only be achieved by his brother as an act of usurpation. 
The force of events, the influence of family, prudence, and a thou- 
sand motives— personal and political — may have contributed to 
quell the temptation. 

The treaty of Fontainbleau, between Napoleon and the allied sove- 
reigns, was signed on the 11th April. But, on the 6th, the Senate 
had already acknowledged Louis XYIIl. as king. He left Hartwell 
on the 18th April — entered London in state on the 23d, and, the 
next day, sailed from Dover for his long anticipated dominion. 

With all the intricate combinations of political events to which 
the Restoration gave rise, we have nothing to do. But much that 
transpired of a more private nature in Paris, is so intimately con- 
nected with the historic problem before us, that I must consider it 
in detail. 

Soon after the re-establishment of the royal family in the capi- 
tal, arrangements, of various kinds, were made to pay due honors 
to the memory of all the Bourbons who had perished since the 
beginning of the Revolution. Here we evidently tread on ground 
which must present some strong indications of the truth in respect 
to the death or preservation of Louis XVII. Were he dead, 
nothing was more easy and simple than the course to be pursued. 
If alive, and the fact known to all the members of the Bourbon 
family, nothing could be more perplexing, or more likely to lead to 
those inconsistencies of conduct and contradictions in policy, which 
mark the era, and which constitute a labyrinth inexplicable on any 



134 THE LOST PRINCE. 

other ground. But, let the reader judge when he has the whole 
before him. 

The first act in the funereal drama, was the exhumation of the 
remains of the unfortunate Due D'Enghein from the moat in the 
Chateau of Vincennes, where they had been deposited after the 
inhuman murder, perpetrated by order of Napoleon, the most 
damning deed in his career of blood. 

The Duchess D'Angouleme played the most prominent part in 
the funeral pageant. She caused a chapel to be fitted up in the 
chdteau, draped in black, rendered entirely dark, and lighted only 
by feeble tapers. Here the corpse of her murdered cousin was 
placed, and hither she repaired, once a week, to pray for the 
repose of his soul.* At the same time efforts were made to 
discover the remains of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and the 
Princess Elizabeth. There was the greatest improbability that any 
Vestige of their bodies remained — and certainly no means of iden- 
tification. They had been buried in tho churchyard of the cemetery 
of the Madeleine, and every care taken to destroy them, and prevent 
their being afterAvards disinterred, as relics, to the prejudice of the 
Eepublic.f The bodies had been deposited in beds of quick lime, 
cartloads of which had been afterwards heaped on them, and, to 
aid in their rapid and effectual decomposition, immense quantities 
of water had been poured upon the whole. Hundreds, or rather 
thousands of bodies, aristocratic and plebeian, royalist and revolu- 
tionary, had been heaped pell-mell in the narrow ground — the 
royal dust lay in the very midst of the five hundred Swiss ;| inter- 
ments, of all kinds, had been purposely and recklessly made 
to defeat identification, and no wonder then that " the thermo- 
meter of sentiment descended below freezing point as soon as the 
royal conclusion was published, that the ashes of the illustrious 
dead should be publicly and solemnly transferred to St. Denis. "§ 

* Ireland, p. 23. 

t Alison, vol. i. p. 155. Memoirs of the Duchess D'Angouleme, p. 326. Ireland, p. 26. 

% Memoirs of the Ducheaa D'Angouleme, p. 821. § Ibid, p. 825 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 135 

Paris stood laughing by as the mock pageant swept along, in fune- 
real pomp and heraldic blazonry, bearing to the royal mausoleum 
" the bodies of the most high, most powerful, and most excellent 
Prince, Louis XVI. by name, and by the grace of God, King 
of France and Navarre ; and of the very high, very powerful, and 
very excellent Princess, Marie Antoinette Joseph Jeane, of Loraine, 
Archduchess of Austria, wife of the very high, very powerful, and 
very excellent Prince Louis, XYL of the name, King of France and 
Navarre * But, while the transaction was ridiculed, attention 
tion was drawn to the significant fact, that there were no funera* 
solemnities for Louis XYIL Attempts, I know, are sometimes made 
to explain this, by saying that, the Roman Church offers no prayers 
for the souls of children, who are not supposed to need them.j 
But this is an evasion, and by no means meets the difficulty. The 
Roman Church buries children, and relatives, in Romish countries, 
respect the remains of those members of their family who die in 
youth. Louis XYIL, if dead, was buried in a spot, well-known — 
no quick lime had been cast, as in the other cases, on the corpse — 
an indication, by the by, that it was not deemed worth while 
to destroy inexistent relics. The Duchess D'Angouleme, who 
showed such marked respect and afifection for the dust of the Duo 
D'Enghien, a distant relative, would be likely to pay equal regard 
for the memory and remains of a brother, who shared her captivity, 
and with whom the most mournful memories of her life were con- 
nected. If she did not pray for his soul — for that is not the point- 
she would assuredly gather his remains, to be deposited beside those 
of his august parents, or would at least take care that a monument 
was erected to perpetuate his name, his virtues, and his suffer- 
ings. 

The omission, therefore, of all resjject to Louis XYIL, at such a 
moment, occasioned, in every place where the circumstances were 
known, surprise and suspicion, which revived all the doubts con- 

♦Memoirs of the Duchess D'Angouleme, p. 325. 
t Lc Phare de New York, February, 1853. 



136 THE LOST PRINCE. 

cerning the death of the Prince which had so long slept in the 
oblivion of the Bourbons and the martial splendors of the em- 
pire. / 

But all speculation on the subject was cut short by the spectral 
revivification of the power of Napoleon, in 1815. Again were the 
Bourbons scattered to the four winds, flying, fighting, or intriguing 
— and the valor and determination of the Duchess D'Angoul6me 
drew from Napoleon the celebrated remark, that she was the only 
man of her family. But the bloody drama of the Hundred Days 
soon came to an end, and Louis XVIIL, a second time, entered the 
Tuileries in triumph, at the very moment when Napoleon quitted 
France for ever. 

The perplexities attending the second restoration, for some 
months, so exclusively occupied the national mind, that the 
question of the death of Louis XVIL was not again revived, until 
aflfairs assumed a sufficiently settled state, to allow the public to see 
that if the predecessor of the reigning sovereign was indeed no 
more, common decency required that some respect should be 
paid to his memory. Public opinion imperatively demanded 
action of some sort, and Louis XVIII. felt compelled to humor it 
to a certain extent — or rather to play with and lull it to sleep by 
promises never fulfilled. 

In January, 1816, a law was passed, by the two Chambers, com- 
manding a monument to be erected at the expense and in the name of 
the French nation, to the memory of Louis XVIL The king, as if 
designing to put this law in immediate execution, issued a royal 
ordinance for the erection of the monument in the church of the 
Madeleine, and gave directions to Lemot, a Parisian sculptor, to 
execute it. M. Belloc was also employed to write an epitaph to be 
inscribed on the mausoleum of the infant king. 

All this looks well. But after all this show of regard, the law 
remained a dead letter. The ordinance was never carried into 
effect — the monument was never erected, and the epitaph has no 
place but among the curiosities of literature, the Limbo of all lost 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 137 

and all abortive things. I give the proposed epitaph and a transla- 
tion below.* Facts are more satiric than Juvenal. 
* The next official action taken in the matter was on 1st March, 
1816, when the Count Decazes, Minister of Police, addressed the 
following letter to the Count Anglds, Prefect of Police : — 

"Paris, March 1st, 1816, • 

'' Mo7isietor le Comte : 

" His majesty has determined by his ordinance of 14th February, 
the place to be occupied by the religious monument, to be erected to the 
memory of Louis XVII. It is really necessary, and I have already called 
your attention to this subject, to discover the precious remains of this illus- 
trious victim of the Ptevolution. It is known that the young king was 
interred in the Cemetery of St. Marguerite, in tho Faubourg St. Antoine, 
in the presence of two civil commissioners, and of the coinmissary of 
police, of the section of the Temple, 8th June, 1795. 

" The yoxmg king should be placed in St. Denis. 

" I request you to render me an account of the precise measures which 
you have prescribed to attain this end, and of their probable result. It 

* Memoriae et cineribus To the memory and ashes 

Ludovici XVII., of Louis XVn., 

quern whom, 

parentibus sanctissimis from his sacred parents 

infando funere orbatum separated by a mournful fate, 

nullas non serumnas perpessum and stricken with every sorrow, 

in ipso fere vitEe limine mors sustulit on the very threshold of life, death removed 

die VIII. junii an. MDCCXCV. on the 8th day of June, 1T95. 
Yixit Annis X. Mensibus II. diebus XII. He lived 10 years, 2 months, 10 days. 

Ludovicus XVIII. Louis XVUI. 

fecit hath erected this 

fratris filio dulcissimo to his nephew most lovely, 
ac supra atatis modum, pietissimo and, beyond the measure of his age, religious, 

salve anima innocens Hail innocent soul, 

quae ceu aureum Gallise sidus who, like a glittering star of France, 

beato spatiaris polo walkest in the blessed skies; 
volenshanc patriam domum que Borboni- auspiciously, this country and the House 

duin placjdo lumine intuetor. of Bourbon, with placid eye, behold. 



138 THE LOST PRINCE. 

will be essential, if this precaution has not been taken, to call the com- 
missaries, and other persons who assisted at the inhumation. 

" The Minister of General Police, • 

" CoMTE Decazes." 

To this letter M. Angles returned the following answer : — 

"Paris, 1st June ^ 18 IG. 

" IKonsieur le Comte : 

" On the reception of your excellency's letter, I appointed two com- 
missaries of police to obtain from the Sieur Dusser — formerly commissary 
of police of the section of the Temple, who in this quality must have 
assisted at the interment of the young monarch — all the information 
which he could furnish on this subject. It results from the information 
that the commissaries obtained, that the Sieur Voisin, aged, at present, 
sixty-five years, and retired to the hospital of Bicetre — was, at the period 
of the death of Louis XVII., conductor of funeral processions, m the 
parish of St. Marguerite, in the cemetery of which the Prince was 
interred, and that they could, in consequence, obtain all the information 
on the very spot of the inhumation. 

" The Sieurs Simon and Petit have obtained from him many details 
which have put them in the way of establishing a system of positive 
information. He has assured them that he dug, in the morning of the day 
of this sad ceremony, a particular grave, in which the body of the king 
was placed, and going to the cemetery with the commissaries, Simon and 
Petit, he traced for them an extent of ground, within the limits of which 
should be found, according to him, at the depth of six feet, the coffin of 
the king, made of white wood, and having at the head and at the feet, a 
D, written by himself with charcoal. 

" The commissaries have also seen the Sieur Bureau, keeper of the ceme- 
tery for twenty years, who affirms that Voisin asked of him, on the morn- 
ing of 12th June, 1795, a coffin for a little girl, and that he understood, 
* during the day, that it was for the Prince whom they then called the 
Dauphin. He pretends that Voisin did not dig a particular grave, and 
that the proces verbal of the inhumation in the common grave was drawn 
up in the parsonage house. Following their inquiry, the commissaries 
have learned from the present cure of St. Marguerite, that a grave-digger 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 139 

named Betrancourt, called Valentine, whose wife still lived, had taken, 
away the body of the young Prince from the common grave, and had 
interred it in a separate place. On inquiring of the widow of this man, if 
she could give any information as to the precise place of burial, she indi- 
cated a friend of her deceased husband, named Decouflet, Beadle of the 
Parish dea Quinze Vingts, who informed them that Betrancourt, called Valen- 
tine, in digging a grave in the cemetery of St. Maguerite, in 1802, pointed 
out a place near a pilaster, on the left of the church, from whence he raised 
about two feet of earth, and disclosed a stone of the foundation of the 
church, upon which was a cross. Betrancourt added, that they would one 
day make a monument there : for beneath that, he added, is the coffin of 
the Dauphin. 

•' From all the information obtained from these different persons, follows, 
that on 12th June, 1795, the mortal remains of his Majesty, Louis XVII. , 
enclosed in a coffin of white wood, four feet and a half in length, was car- 
ried from the Temple to the cemetery of St. Marguerite, about nine o'clock 
in the evening ; that the proces verbal of this ceremony was drawn up in 
the parsonage house, by the Sieur Gille, then commissary of police : that 
it appears probable that the body was taken from the common grave ; 
that this operation was executed in secret, and during the same or the 
following night, by Voisin or Valentine ; that, if it was by the last, the 
place where the ashes of the young king repose, is near the pilaster, on 
the left side of the gate of the church, on entering the cemetery ; that, if 
it was by the former, the particular grave can be found, within the space 
which Voisin has designated, to the left of the cross raised in the middle 
of the cemetery, in going round the back of the church, &c. 
" I pray your Excellency, &c., 

" C. Angles." 

Here, certainly, was information, which, though differing in 
details, was sufficiently precise to found an investigation upon. 
Two places were indicated — in one of which there was every rea- 
son to suppose the body would be found. And, to avoid all possi- 
bility of being deceived as to the remains, M. Pelletan certified to 
the condition in which the body buried as the Dauphin would be 
found; viz. that the skull was divided in a particular manner. 



140 THE LOST PRINCE. 

wMcli he minutely described, together with the dressing in which 
it was enveloped, portions of which he said " certainly existed," as 
means of identification. Bnt there the matter ended. No attempt 
was made to discover the asserted remains of the Prince. The skele- 
tons of Louis XVI. and his queen, buried in quick lime for twenty 
years, and mixed up indistinguishably in a common revolutionary 
sepulchre, were infallibly discovered, by an instinct peculiar to some 
classes of men. But, notwithstanding the passage of laws and 
ordinances, the employment of sculptors and epitaph writers, the 
very first efibrt was not made to recover a body, whose place 
of interment was indicated, and which could be submitted to a 
certain and definite process of identification. Beauchesne, him- 
self, has to acknowledge that he cannot account for the annulling 
of the royal ordinance, and declares that the place where the body 
was buried is demonstrably certain. "As I have proved," he 
says, " that the royal infant died in the Temple, it is to me equally 
demonstrated that his corpse, wrapped in a winding-sheet, was 
placed in a coffin, which has neither been opened nor changed ; 
that it was, with the remains which it contained, buried in the 
cemetery of St. Marguerite, and in the place indicated." Now, if 
M. Beauchesne's enthusiasm be not all assumed, and, if he, indeed, 
feels the affection and reverence for the memory of Louis XVIL 
which he asserts, I cannot doubt that he would most gladly, were 
he permitted, even at this late day, undertake the search for the 
royal remains, which he believes to exist. How then, on any 
principle of natural affection or probability, can it be imagined 
that the sister of the Prince, subjected to the same imprisonment 
with him, and the uncle who sat on his throne, would neglect such 
plain and simple means to gather, from their neglected and dis- 
honored grave, the bones of the young martyr king ? 

But this is not all. We come now to the controversy concern- 
ing the heart of the captive Prince, which affords moral evidence, 
of precisely the same nature, that the royal family did not believo 
in the death of their relative in the Temple. At least, if they did, 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 141 

their condnct is the strangest and most unaccountable that the 
world has ever seen. 

What, then, are the facts in the premises ? M. Pelletan, one of 
the surgeons charged with opening the asserted body of Louis 
XVII. — a man of high character, socially and professionally, whose 
testimony we are bound to receive, unless we cast aside all reliance 
on direct evidence — communicated to Louis XYIIL, through the 
Minister of the Interior, the startling information that he was in 
^possession of the heart of Ms 'predecessor^ and gave a minute his- 
tory of the interesting relic. 

ISTow, the existence of the heart of Louis XYIL, if true, was a 
fact doubly important, in case of there being some insuperable bar 
to the discovery of his grave, or the identification of his remains ; 
and it would be natural to expect that the royal family would 
manifest a deep interest in the subject, and not lightly reject the 
respectable evidence adduced to identify the relic. 

Pelletan stated, that being specially charged with conducting the 
post-mortem, and finding himself, for a few minutes, left alone by 
his associates, who had retired into the embrasure of the window, 
to converse, the idea occurred to him of possessing the heart of 
his patient. Watching a moment when entirely unobserved, and 
entertaining no fear of being searched, he covered it with bran, 
wrapt it in linen, and put it in his pocket. On his return home, 
he deposited the relic in spirits of wine, and concealed it on a 
lofty beam in his library. During ten years, he replenished the 
spirits of wine many times— but, at last, it entirely evaporated, 
leaving the heart dried and shrivelled. There was now no neces- 
sity for further precaution, and he placed it in a drawer of his 
secretary, where he saw and examined it a thousand times. 

It, however, happened that he communicated the fact to a 
pupil, who, when the period of his professional study was over, 
surreptitiously took it away, and it was some time before he dis- 
covered the theft. Being on intimate terms with him, he hesitated 
to charge him with dishonesty. But when, on his death-bed, his 



142 THE LOST PRINCE. 

friend confessed the larceny to his family, and commissioned his 
wife to return him the relic ; he received it from her hand — and, as 
she and other members of the family were witnesses to the confes- 
sion, we have proof not only of the identity of the heart recovered, 
but of Pelletan's truthfulness. But, in addition, M. Dumaugin, 
his colleague, testified that, at the close of the operation, he saw 
him wrap something up carefully, and put it in his pocket. 
Although he did not at the time know that it was the heart, he 
declared that, " in his soul and in his conscience he was morally 
convinced of the fact " stated by M. Pelletan. On the communi- 
cation of this important information, the following royal order 
was issued, after full examination of testimony : — 

" Paris, 3d September, 1817. 
"ministry of the interior. 
*' To the Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice : 
" My Lord : — 
" I have received the pieces which your highness has done me the honor 
to communicate, both relative to the preservation of the heart of his 
Majesty Louis XVII., and as to the place where his body was buried. 
The intention of the king being that the heart of this Prince, and that of 
S. A. El. le Dauphin, elder son of his Majesty Louis XVL, which is in 
possession of the mayor of the 12th arrondisement, be transferred to St. 
Denis, without pomp, but, nevertheless, with proper ceremonies. I trans- 
mit, conformably to the order of his majesty, all the documents to the 
grand master of the ceremonies. 

" The Secretary of St.\te to the 

" Department of the Interior." 

Here was the termination of the matter. The order was never 
carried into eflfect, as far as the heart of the prisoner of the Temple 
was concerned. The only plea for not depositing the heart in St. 
Denis, was the negative testimony of an underling, Lasne, that he 
had not seen the surgeon put it in his pocket, and although this 
was in fact confirmatory of Pelletan's statement, yet with an apa- 
thy, entirely unaccountable, it was permitted to outweigh the 



FUNERAL SOLEMNITIES. 143 

positive and respectable testimony of a man of station and charac- 
ter like Pelletan, confirmed in so many ways. The heart, enclosed 
in a vase of crystal, remains to this day in the family of the great 
physician. 

In view of all these facts, relative to the funeral solemnities for 
the departed Bourbons, and the remains of the asserted Dauphin, I 
do not think there can be any other reasonable conclusion than 
that the royal family of France knew that the Prince was not dead, 
and therefore dared not risk the mockery of searching for a cori>se 
that had never been buried — of building a mausoleum for one still 
alive — of consecrating a relic which they knew, though honestly 
preserved, had throbbed in no bosom of their race. 

I can readily conceive, that state reasons might induct the sister 
of the Prince to consent that one untrained for political life should 
continue in obscurity, and not endanger the happiness of France 
and the peace of Europe by being thrust into a position he was 
incompetent to fill : but that, while she so far yielded to the sophis- 
try of her uncle and the various influences that surrounded her, she 
would steadily resist the mockery of rearing a sepulchre to the living. 

Throughout this whole transaction the king seems willing to per- 
petrate the required deceptions, but withheld by some concealed 
influence. 

It is unnecessary to pursue further the history of the Bourbons. 
Hereafter I may have occasion briefly to refer to some of the sub- 
sequent changes in the French government. It is sufficient for the 
present that I have shown conclusively not only that Louis XVII. 
did not die in the Temple, but that all the probabilities of history 
apart from the central chain of evidence, lead to the same conclu- 
sion. The review of the French Eevolution, and of the history of 
France up to the period of the second Bourbon Restoration, has 
opened the various influences, political and domestic, which, from 
his cradle surrounded the unfortunate Prince. We have seen an 
ambitious and unprincipled relative scheming to obtain the throne 
which he inherited, and aiding to produce the convulsion that de- 



144 THE LOST PRINCE. 

luged Europe with blood. We have seen the Prince in person £nr- 
ronnded by the creatures of his uncle, under circumstances which 
afford the highest probability of their design to remove him. It has 
been demonstrated on admitted facts that he did not die in the Tem- 
ple. The data furnished by those who labor to prove his death, esta- 
blish the contrar3^ If people cannot be satisfied with abstract 
physical impossibility, there is no use in reasoning, for, beyond this, 
argument and evidence cannot go. Finally, although Louis XYII. is, 
in history, usually numbered among the dead, there is up to this 
moment no funereal, no monumental recognition of his death, but a 
mystery, and an inconsistency attending every official effort to pay 
him the respect which his misfortunes deserve at the hands of the 
great French nation, and an apathy on the part of his nearest rela- 
tives, bound by every principle of religion, morality, and 'social 
feeling, as well as by every prescriptive law of custom and decency, 
to pay some honor to his memory, which carry the historic argu- 
ment to its climax. 

And yet, perhaps, there are those who will tell me, the death of 
Louis XYII. is an historical fact — the evidence for ij^ direct and 
positive ; and, pointing to some inconsiderate sentence in Scott, or 
Alison, or Thiers, will sagely assure me that if I deny his death in 
the Temple, I must also deny that of Napoleon, or of his father and 
mother, since the testimony for the former was as strong and con- 
clusive as for the latter.* On such persons I do not care to waste 
a thought or a word. They seem to think that because some man, 
calling himself a historian, makes a statement, we have no right to 
question it. Magister dixit. Thank Heaven, the age for such men- 
tal slavery has passed. 

In truth, much that we call history is very loosely written, and 
the conclusion of most sensible minds will, I thinlc, be, that the his- 
toric guides, on whom, in a general way, we are forced to depend, 
lead us astray as often as they conduct us right; that usually only 

» The United States Review. June, 1853, vol, i., No. 6. 
Ih-. Stephen Williams's Appendix and Notes to the Redeemed Captive, p. 190. 



KAU^DORFF AND RICHEMONT. 145 

the most superficial aspect of events is presented by the chronicler, 
and that he who would gain light on material points must search 
for it himself. 



CHAPTER' IX. 

NAIJNDOEFF AND EIOHEMONT. 

We now approach a portion of our subject, invested with a mys- 
tery which may never fully be removed. Many of the attempts to 
personate Louis XYII., were simply the result of the popular 
belief in his existence; and, standing entirely apart from, the main 
current of events, do not deserve even a passing attention, except 
as evidences of chat impression in the public mind, out of which 
they originated, and from which they derived their power of decep- 
tion. There are others, however, which though equally false in 
themselves, yet bring us into contact with facts that bear directly 
on the subject of our investigation. Such, especially, is the claim 
put forth by Herr ISTaundorff. 

The imposture of Hervagault, 1798, is of no historic importance, 
except as eliciting, through his zealous partizan, the bishop of 
Viviers, the fact, that the physicians who opened the body in the 
Temple, expressed, in conversation, the same uncertainty apparent 
in the proces verbal, and acknowledged their inability to testify to 
the death of Louis XYII.* 

Marturin Bruneau, the second pretender, after personating the 
son of a French nobleman, went to America, and on his return to 
France, in 1815, set up in the new character of the Dauphin. His 
fictions, concerning his personal history, were so gross and palpable 
that I need -not allude to them. It seems, probable, however, that 
the idea of his imposture was derived from a report then circula- 
ting in France, that Louis XYII. was in the United States. As he 

♦ Memoirs of tho Duchess D'Angoul^me, p. 889. 
b 



146 THE LOST PRINCE. 

had been in this country, this was a suffioient basis for his preten- 
sions. In a letter, addressed by him, from Rouen, in March, 1816, 
to the Duchess D'Angoul^me, he says, "I dispersed the last 
calumny which perversity had aimed at me, when it declared that, 
your trotJier was still in the United States. No, I had left it long 
ago."* However slight be the indication here presented, it is 
worthy of preservation, as it tallies with the alleged fact that, 
about this time, a certificate of the death of the Prince, in a 
foreign land,t was forged by the adherents of Louis XVIII. 

N A U N D O II F F . 

It was no ordinary imposture which could deceive the class 
of minds whom i^aundorff enlisted in his service, and we can- 
not dismiss his pretensions without examination, because while 
they prove their own falsehood, they also establish important 
historic facts. In 1838, the Hon. and Rev. G. 0. Percival 
published, with notes, an English translation of the evidence 
adduced by his advocates, M. M. Gruan and Bruquet. In an intro- 
duction to the work, he states the grounds of his own belief, which 
are simply these — that IlTaundorff had endeavored to procure a 
legal inquiry into the validity of his claims; that tlie French 
government, which had brought other pretenders to trial, had 
declined to grant him a hearing ; and that persons of respecta- 
bility and credibility imagined that they recognised him. J Mr. 
Percival frankly admits that there are many difficulties attending 
the pretensions of ISTaundorff, and that much of his evidence, 
especially the supernatural portion, is of a questionable character ; 
but perceiving clearly that there was some unexplained connection 
between the Pretender and the truth, and having no clue, but the 
statements of Naundorff, to the mystery, appears to have yielded a 
forced acquiescence. The work of Naundorff's advocates is most 

* Memoirs of the Duchess D'Angouleme, p. 417. 

t Percival, p. 1S5. % Par«ival, Preface, p. xvii. 



NAUNDORFF AND RICHfiMONT. 147 

perplexed in its arrangement, or rather want of arrangement, 
but I will endeavor to extract from it the evidence which 
it contains. Falsehood attends truth like its shadow, and unde- 
signedly gives testimony against itself, and in favor of that which 
it darkly mimics. 

In 1833, a stranger arrived in Paris, who represented himself to 
be the son of Louis XVI. He assumed the name of Louis Charles, 
Duke of Normandy — introduced himself into legitimist circles, and 
very soon obtained ardent and highly respectable adherents. 
Among them were Madame de Eambaud, who had been nurse to 
the Dauphin from his birth until his confinement in the Temple. 
M. Marco de St. Hilaire, formerly gentleman usher to Louis XVL, 
and M. Morel de St. Didier. Of the perfect sincerity and honorable 
convictions of these persons there can be no question. 

The most diligent inquiries respecting Naundorff's past history 
could only elicit a few leading facts apart from his own account. 
He arrived in Prussia in 1810, was known by the name of Charles 
"William JS'aundorff, and followed the trade of a watchmaker. He 
lived as a citizen of Spandau from 1812 to 1821, having married in 
1818, without producing the certificate of his birth. In 1820 he 
was arrested on a charge of having circulated false coin, and, 
being found guilty, was sent to the house of correction. In 
the course of the trial he avowed himself to be a prince, but with- 
out stating any name. He was at the same time accused of setting 
fire to the theatre at Brandenburg, but his accusers were found 
guilty of perjury, and, on the other charge, the evidence against 
him was far from satisfactory. He continued in prison until 1828, 
when he received pardon, and was sent into Silesia. In 1832, he 
obtained a passport to France, and, passing through Bavaria and 
Switzerland, arrived in Paris, declared himself to be Duke of ISTor- 
mandy, affirmed that the proofs of his identity were in the hands 
of the Prussian cabinet, and referred to the inhabitants of Spandau 
for a vindication of his character. 

In support of his pretensions, iJ^aundorflT gave the following 



148 THE LOST PRINCE. 

account of his early years. His memory, he pretended, extended 
back, without a break or flaw, until some time prior to the journey 
from Versailles to Paris, when he was four yeai» of age. From 
that time he professed the most minute knowledge of places, per- 
sons, names, dresses, the situation of furniture, the succession of 
events, and everything, public and private, which happened to the 
Dauphin. He was acquainted with all the details of the Temple, 
the manner in which the rooms were furnished, and the famihar 
manners and actions of all the members of the royal family, which 
he described in the style of exact and well-written memoirs, com- 
posed when objects and events were fresh before the eye and mind. 
He, however, evidently overdid the matter, and while he sometimes 
fell into egregious misstatemeuts,* pretended to be familiar with 
minute details of transactions occurring in his early childhood, 
such as no ordinary human memory could have retained, and which 
were peculiarly inconsistent with the mental condition to which 
the Prince had been reduced. 

In respect to his asserted escape, he said that, some months pre- 
vious, he was conveyed from his apartment into the large, open 
room at the top of the Tower, and concealed behind furniture. 
Prior, however, to his removal, he had witnessed the substitution of 
a large icooden doll for him, which was carved and painted to 
resemble him, and placed in his bed. This story outraged all pro- 
bability, and he subsequently modified it. The doll was exchanged 
for a dumb boy, the person visited and reported upon, by Har- 
mand; Desault was taken out of the way for not recognising 
in this dumb child the Dauphin — and the dumb child had in turn 
a rickety child substituted for him, because, though poisoned, he 
would not die — and then the rickety child was poisoned outright, 
and the dumb child carried as the Dauphin to Madame Beau- 
harnais. The body of the rickety child was buried in the Temple 
privately, and he was then brought from the garret and placed in 

* " The particulars given respecting the return of the royal family after the ill-fated 
journey to Varennes, are not in accordance with those mentioned by Madame Cam- 
pan and others." — Percival, p. 88. 



NAUNDORFF AND RICHEMONT. 149 

the coflSa; but a further change was effected in the carriage 
between him and some stones, which were buried as the Dauphin * 
"My friends," says Naundorff, " fearing I might be discovered, dis- 
guised me, and sent me in a carriage out of Paris, thinking it expe- 
dient to remove me from the capital. At the same time to put my 
enemies upon a wrong scent, they sent off a child, a native of Ver- 
sailles, loith his parents, intending to pass him for me. It was 
intended to convey me to the Yend^ean army." During this jour- 
dey, he says he was taken sick, and remained at a chateau in the 
country under the care of a lady, when " one day there came three 
persons dressed in uniform with which I was unacquainted. I 
was told they were General Charette and two of his friends." 
" While at the chateau, I knew that a Mr. B. was in communica- 
tion with Madame * * *; he had also another friend, formerly 
dame du palais to my excellent mother. It was they who then 
furnished me with all that was necessary. I have seen Mr. B. at a 
distance, always disguised as an old peasant. I was delivered into 
the hands of Mr. B., with whom I found a young girl named 
Marie, and his huntsman Jean, whose real name was Mont Morin. 

" These two friends, henceforth, managed my affairs. They sent 
for a man and his son, who was alout my age. This man received 
a sum of money suflQcient to enalle him to emlarTc for America, 
and when these measures were taken, we set out ourselves for 
Venice." Here, he asserts, he had a secret interview with the 
Pope, that he was rejoined by the old man and his son, who again 

embarked, that he took flight for England ;t that Mr. B and 

the young Marie were assassinated, and he himself taken prisoner 
and carried into France, where he remained in confinement until 
1803, when he was liberated by Josephine and Fouche. In 1804, 

* This story is very different from one which he told in an earlier period of his 
career, when he stated that he was removed from the Temple, in a basket, in a state 
of unconsciousness.— Fide Filia Dolorosa, p. 475. 

+ In his earlier narratives, he went himself to America, at this time and " was 
inclined to think he learned watchmaking there, but could not exactly teU whether 
he acquired this art in the United States or in lt&\y,"— Filia Dolorosa, p. 4T6. 



150 THE LOST PRINCE. 

he was carried by his friends to Strasburg, where he was 
arrested and confined in the fortress. The description of his suf- 
ferings in this prison is so graphic, that it would almost induce 
me to regard them as real. It strongly contrasts, in its vivid sim- 
plicity, with the forced and mystified style of the earlier portions of 
his narrative, where everything is enveloped in clouds of incongru- 
ity. " The light of sun or moon never reached me. All idea of day 
was effaced from my mind as well as of division of time. I knew 
every step of my dungeon. With the exception of that of my 
jailer's feet, I heard no sound but that of the heavy drums, which 
appeared to me like the rolling of distant thunder. The space in 
the roof through which the light might have penetrated more 
freely, gave me the idea of being at the extremity of a long tube, 
which appeared to terminate in dirty water, through which the 
sun might shine, or which "was covered with cobwebs. The space 
between the walls formed a square of about twelve feet. My hair 
became long and curly, my beard had grown, and when I touched 
my face I could have fancied myself a wild beast. My nails were 
so long that they broke in bits, and I could only avoid the pain, 
which was the consequence, by biting them with my teeth. I 
despaired of again beholding the surface of the earth." In the 
spring of 1809, he was delivered from this dungeon by his friend, 
Mont Morin, and the secret aid of Josephine. He was taken to 
Frankfort. Mont Morin, at this time, he pretends, sewed in the 
collar of his great-coat, certain 'paj^ers^ written ty Marie Antoinette^ 
earnestly recommending him never to part with them, as they 
would prove undeniable proofs of his identity to all the sovereigns 
of Europe. So that, according to his own statement, the papers 
which were to establish his claims, did not come into his posses- 
sion until fourteen years after the escape of the Prince, and would 
be worthless as evidence, could they be shown, because fhey would 
frove just as much in favor of any person who might chance to hold 
them. 
Again he led a life of wandering and romantic adventure, the ac- 



NAUNDORFF AND RICHEMONT. 151 

count of which seems, from its raciness and simplicity, to be for the 
most part, genuine. In January, they obtained from the Duke of 
Brunswick, letters of recommendation for Prussia, by means of 
which they were kindly received at Semnicht, by Major de Schill, 
an officer of the duke's army. In a skirmish Mont Morin was 
killed, and he himself struck from his horse by a blow from the 
butt-end of a musket. He was taken prisoner and put in an 
hospital. While still suffering from the effects of his wound, he 
was carried to the fortress of Wesel, on the frontier of France, and, 
mixed up with other prisoners, was transferred from one prison to 
another. Left behind in consequence of sickness, he regained his 
liberty, and lived a wretched vagabond life until 1810, when he 
emerged from the dreamy obscurity which attends him while he 
has only himself for a historian, to the daylight of a watchmaker's 
shop, Schutz en Strasse, 52, Berlin. Here, he pretends, he lost his 
papers, by giving them for the purpose of his identification to Mr. 
Lecoque, who handed them to the Prince Hartenburg. He now 
assumed, by compulsion, he asserts, the name of Charles W. Nauii- 
dorff. From 1812 to 1832, when he appeared in Paris, he was in 
the habit, at intervals, of writing letters to the Duchess 
D'Angouleme, the Prince Hartenburg, Louis XVIII., and other 
eminent persons, but without obtaining any response. 

Such was the story which in 1832, '3, Naundorff told to his c?rcle 
of intimate friends, in Paris ; although it was not published in 
detail until several years after, when he had exhausted, without 
success, every means of obtaining an interview with the Duchess 
D'Angouleme, or a hearing of his cause before the French tri- 
bunals. His adherents imagined that they recognised in him the 
Dauphin by his Bourbon physiognomy, by marks upon his person, 
and by his memory of historic events. But not content with natu- 
ral means of identification, he resorted to supernatural. There 
was, at that time, in France, a peasant named Martin, who had the 
reputation of being inspired. It seems to be historic, that in 1818, 
he obtained an interview with Louis XVIIL, under the plea of 



152 THE LOST PRINCE. 

having some divine revelation to communicate ; and popular rumor 
declared that it related to the king's nephew, as it undoubtedly exer- 
cised a great influence on his mind. In 1825, Martin announced in 
public, with oracular brevity, the burden of his interview with 
Louis Xyill. "Louis Xyil. exists." Naundorff, who before his 
coming to Paris, had disbelieved and hated Christianity, was sud- 
denly converted to the Romish faith, and shortly after had an inter- 
view with Martin, when it appeared they were old acquaintances, 
and had long seen each other in visions, except that Martin's 
ghostly counterpart had white hair; but I may state, on the 
authority of the curate of St. Arnoult, who relates the story, that 
the peasant's hair, soon after, miraculously changed from a raven 
black to a snowy whiteness. After this, apparitions crowded thick 
upon each other, and the Prince was consoled in his troubles, by 
spiritual converse with the protecting angel of France^ and as Mar- 
tin was also in habits of intimacy Avith the spirits, they received 
telegraphic information from the other world of all that was to 
occur in this. One day, Martin brought the news of his own 
death, and the Prince became the sole receptacle of ghostly infor- 
mation, and, in a truly Christian spirit, was accustomed to 
forewarn his enemies, and among them, Louis Phillipe, of the ills 
that awaited them. 

Things stood in this position in the beginning of 1834, when it 
was determined that M. Morel de St. Didier should visit the 
Duchess D'Angouleme, then resident at Prague, and by the presen- 
tation of evidence, induce her to grant an interview with Naundoff. 
He carried with him a letter from Madame de Rambaud, in which 
that lady assured the duchess of her full and entire conviction that 
Kaundorff was her brother, that his personal appearance, their 
interchange of recollections and especially (271. inoculation marTc in 
the form of a crescent were indisputable proofs to her that he was 
what he asserted himself to be— " the Prince, the Orphan of the 
Temple." 

Marco de St. Hilaire also stated that, on similar grounds, hia 



NAUNDORFF AND EICHEMONT. 153 

conviction was so strong that it was impossible to overthrow it. 
St. Didier had two interviews with the Duchess, one in February, 
and the other in September, 1834, in which her words on some 
occasions were so enigmatical, her conduct so much at variance 
with her expressions, her anxiety so evident, and her final treatment 
of St. Didier and Madame de Rambaud so disingenuous, if not 
insulting, that it seems impossible to explain the affair, except on 
the score of her knowledge of some secret which entirely under- 
cut the claims Of ISTaundorff, but was of a nature which would not 
permit her to state her grounds of action. On seeing the portrait 
of Kaundorff, she remarked, after attentive examination, " I do not 
see any resemblance to my family." Subsequently she rejected 
that of Richemont with an indignant, "ISTo, sir, that is not the 
thing." "While she professed to believe that her brother was dead, 
" unless another was substituted in Ms 'place^'' she evinced, to say 
the least, her uncertainty on the subject, by saying, " This is too 
serious a matter to be lightly examined, and of such Importance 
that it will be necessary to devote several days to the consideration 
of it." As to the evidence adduced she remarked, "If anything 
could for a moment arrest my attention, it would be Madame de 
Rambaud's letter, because I remember that she was in fact my 
brother's attendant, but all that is nothing." When his recollec- 
tions of the details of early events were mentioned, she rephed, 
"yes, I understand, but all that is not sufficient ; I must have other 
proofs before I can grant the interview — tell him lie must send me 
ly a confidential messenger^ and in icriting^ all tTiat lie now refuses 
to tell me hut by word of mouth. Above all^ tell him to send me all 
the details relative to his escape from the Temple ; that is al}solutely 
necessary^ and I persist particularly on this points And here I 
may remark that this message argues an acquaintance on the part 
of the duchess with the fact of her brother's existence, and with 
the mode of his escape, otherwise she could not have brought 
Kaundorff's statement, however false, to any test — while at the same 
time the evasive answer, which, as we shall see, the pretender 

7* 



154 THE LOST PRINCE. 

returned, shows, he felt, she had the power of detecting his falsehood. 
M. de St. Didier departed from Prague to consult with Naundorff". 
Meanwhile, a remarkable and mysterious interview took place 
between the duchess and the King of Prussia, in relation to Naun- 
dorff. Dresden was the spot first fixed on for the meeting, and the 
king went there incognito, but not finding her, he followed her first 
to Pilnitz, and then to Toplitz, where they had a long conference, 
concerning which, nothing distinct can be ascertained, except that 
the duchess asked a variety of questions respecting Naundorff, which 
the king answered. St. Didier again went to Prague in September, 
carrying with him a letter in relation to the asserted escape of 
Naundorff, and being accompanied by Madame de Rambaud. He 
found the manner of the duchess this time, entirely altered. She 
was cold and reserved, and instead of the interest she had formerly 
manifested, she now showed perfect indifference and contempt for 
Naundorff, as if she had fathomed him. As to his recollections, she 
said all that he had stated had appeared in print, or must have been 
read by him. 

When St. Didier spoke of a recent attempt to assassinate him, 
though she smiled incredulously at first, yet on being assured it was 
a fact, she used, in reply to the observation that " no one would 
thinJc of assassinating an imposto?'^^^ the remarkable words, " Far- 
don me^ si?'," — and, then, struggling between affected composure 
and irritation, exclaimed, " M. de St. Didier, this man is nothing 
but an impostor, an intriguer, but very clever — 'bie7i haMle — you are 
under a delusion of which I do not partake." This was all that St. 
Didier could obtain, except an acknowledgment of the interview 
with the King of Prussia. The letter, of which he was thgi bearer, 
was certainly not calculated to increase the confidence of the 
duchess. It is remarkable on tAVO accounts. 1. It tells a different 
story from that which Naundorff' has elsewhere given. 2d. It shifts 
the point of mystery from himself to another. He begins, " Madame, 
your royal highness wishes to know in what manner I escaped from 
the Temple. Three men came to me, among whom was the 



NAUNDORFF AND RICHEMONT. 155 

person who guarded me constantly, and who was also one of those 
who removed me first out of this room, and soon afterwards out of 
the Temple. I was put, against my will, into a large kind of wicker 
basket, from which a child of about my oim age and size had been 
talen and placed in my bed^ Here the wooden doll entirely dis- ^ 
appears from the narrative, and the substitution of the children is 
direct. Instead of proceeding to state, as was required of him, how 
he got out of the Temple, he continues, " This, madam, is all the 
information that I think I ought to give your royal highness in 
writing, prudence forbidding me to confide to paper the mystery 
tohich envelopes'^— \^h.2X, in the name of consistency, does the reader 
think ? — ''■ all which relates to the child who was substituted for me. 
Nevertheless, I am willing to give to my sister, to your royal high- 
ness, I mean, but to your royal highness alone, and by word of 
mouth, indisputable proofs which will remove all your remaining 
doubts, if any remain ; and it is on that account that I firmly 
believe that an early interview between you and myself is now 
become indispensable. Admitting, for an instant, that I am not 
the son of the unfortunate Louis XVI., that I am, in fact, only an 
impostor," &c., &c., &c. The presentation of this letter, and all St. 
Didier's entreaties having failed to obtain the consent of the 
duchess to a personal interview, the following singular scene 
occurred. " There remained another painful duty for me to 
fulfil. I was about to wound the heart of the Prince's unfortu- 
nate sister in its dearest affections. All the strength of a deep and 
entire conviction was necessary to determine me to do so. But, 
fidelity, devotion, and honor, imposed on me this painful duty, and 
I could not shrink from it. Having gathered all my resolution, I 
added in a serious tone : 

" ' My respect for your royal highness is a sacred duty which my 
heart will never allow me to forget. Your royal highness will, 
therefore, condescend to appreciate the violence I do to my own 
feelings in wounding a heart already torn by so many sorrows ; 
but, liowever, painful the effort, my orders are peremptory, and my 



15G THE LOST PRINCE. 

obedience to them must be implicit. I am commanded to infonn 
your royal highness, in the name of the Prince, that he has certain 
knowledge of the two following facts' — 

******** 
It is not my business to reveal them here. Secresy is commanded 
by the Prince. I will only say, that I had the honor of informing 
her royal highness that he had in his possession unanswerable 
proof of the facts in question. Her royal highness listened to me 
"with great and visible attention ; her agitation was extreme, it was 
in vain that she endeavored to assume an air of calmness, she was 
unable to recover her composure. Her royal highness denied one 
of these facts — the other she passed over in silence," 

Still, St. Didier did not despair. Having failed himself, he next 
strove, through the agency of the "Viscountess D'Agoult, to obtain 
an audience for Madame Rambaud, who had gone from Paris to 
Prague, expressly to see the duchess; but, to his infinite and 
somewhat ludicrous mortification and surprise, he received from 
the viscountess the following note : " Sir — I have executed your com- 
mission ; the answer of the Dauphiness is : that she knew Madame de 
Rambaud, who, more than forty years ago, was the attendant of 
the Dauphin : that not thinking it possible that a person of her ago 
should have undertaken so fatiguing a journey, she has no reason 
for seeing the person of that name whom you have brought 
hither." They soon received a notification from the police to 
leave Prague, and the door of all further communication was 
closed. 

The next event which throws any light on the afiair, is the 
account of a conference by M. Lamprade, between him and M. de 
Rochow, ministers of the interior, at Berlin, in 18S6. This seems 
to admit us to the knowledge of the sentiments of the Prussian 
court upon the subject, and, consequently, to lift the veil, in part, 
from the interview between the king and the duchess. Lamprade 
began by attempting to prove the escape of the Dauphin, when 
Rochow interrupted him by saying, " Every one knows what to 



NAUNDORFI' AND RICHEMONT. 167 

think on that subject, and Ihelieve with you^ the Dauphin did not 
die in the prison of the Temple^ but how do you prove the iden- 
tity f'' and, after admitting there was a mystery^ referred to the 
documentary proofs which Naundorff asserted, had been confided 
by him, in 1811, to the Prince Hartenburg, denied that there were 
any such in the king's possession, but added " Even if the papers 
were in the Mng''s cadinet^ what would that prove? Might it not he 
fossitle that this man had^ infact^ Icnown the real Dauphin f " "We 
may fairly conckide these words of the Prussian minister to be an 
indication of more distinct knowledge possessed by his master. 

It is not necessary to say much respecting the vain efforts which 
Naundorff made to bring his claim for adjudication before the 
tribunals of France. There is no question, that he used every 
possible exertion to bring the matter to a legal issue, but was 
denied. Hervagault and Bruneau had long since been tried and 
condemned. Kichemont seems to have been brought forward 
almost under the patronage of the police, to disconcert Naundorff, 
for, in his baseless claims, he had none of the enthusiasm of an 
intriguer, but the placid coolness of an instrument who feels him- 
self safe. But Naundorff was excluded from a hearing. It seems 
certain, also, that an attempt was made to assassinate him — for the 
fact does not rest on his own testimony, but on that of the St. 
Eilaires, who were people of station and character. The evident 
injustice, in a legal point of view, which was done him, naturally 
created sympathy, and induced the belief, that since the French 
government shunned an itivestigation, they believed him to be what 
he pretended. In 1838, he was quietly hustled out of France and 
conveyed to England. He employed himself at first in the manu- 
facture of rockets, and afterwards of bomb-shells. Another attempt 
at assassination induced him to retire to Delft, in Holland, where he 
expired in 1844, and was buried with regal honors — an object of 
sympathy and respect to thousands, who felt that he could not be 
confounded with the ordinary run of impostors. 

The pretensions of ISTaundorff kept the French government, from 



158 THE LOST PRINCE. 

1832 until 1844, in continual uneasiness, because they tended to 
revive half-buried memories, to excite discussion, and to elicit 
important evidence upon the general question. Persons in almost 
every rank of society came forward and threw their contributions 
upon the accumulating pile. Unfortunately, much fell either into 
the hands of IvTaundorff or of the government^-by the latter it was 
concealed for its own purposes, and by the former, mangled and 
mystified in publication, by the substitution of initials for names, 
and by being mixed up with documents, undoubtedly forged, or 
liable to strong suspicion of being so. But there are two species 
of evidence elicited by the appearance of ISTaundorfF, which have 
intrinsic value. 1. That which was published by persons of cha- 
racter and standing, challenging denial, and giving authorities of 
name, time, and place ; and, 2, That which, though imperfectly 
stated in respect to these particulars, by the legal advisers of 
ISTaundorff, yet, tended to cast discredit on his individual claims, 
and was acknowledged by his friends to militate with his story, 
while it went to establish historical facts independently of him. 
Such evidence I consider to be historical and just as good now as 
ever. 

Thus M. Morin de Gueriviere, an artizan and manufacturer, 2, 
Eue Chapon, Paris, laid a memorial before the Count D'Artois, in 
1823, an account of which was published in the " Quotidienne " of 
November 6th, of that year, stating that in July, 1795, while 
travelling in a postchaise, under the protection of M. Jervais 
Ojardias, agent of the Prince de Ooude, he was arrested on his 
arrival at Thiers, Puy de Dome, on the charge of being the 
Dauphin. He was surrounded by gens d'armes, the local authori- 
ties summoned, a proces verbal drawn up, and he was only set at 
liberty after full examination and disproval.* 

* lie was fortunately able to exhibit the order for his release, which is as follows : 
" Liberty. " Jdsticb. 

" Du Puy, the 22 Messidor , year 3, (10 July, 1795). 
" Equality. " Humanity. 

" J. P. Chaael, repreaeatatire of the people, delegated by the National Convention 



NAUNDORFF AND RICHEMONT. 159 

In 1832, he published a pamphlet, entitled — " Recollections to serve 
cts a supplement for the completion of the proof s of the existence of the 
Duke of Normandy^ son of Louis XYI.^'' in which, besides stating 
the above facts, he gives an account of an interview with an agent 
of Louis XVIII, in 1823, named Desmarres, living in the court of 
the Palais Koyal, who was sent to him, in consequence of the pre- 
sentation of the memorial to the Count D'Artois, and stated that he 
had caused great alarm in the palace^ and occasioned the report that 
Louis XVLL. had presented himself there. After this, another per- 
son from the court, who was in close intimacy with the Duchess 
D'Angouleme, and who went direct from him to her, advised him 
to preserve the document concerning his arrest with great care, as 
it would hereafter be of value, adding, "Well, Louis XVII. is 
living, I know it, but the dearest interests of France forbid that he 
should now ascend the throne of his ancestors." The Abb6 
Allegre Tourzel also congratulated him on having been arrested as 
the son of Louis XVL, and said, " I know from good authority 
that tlie Prince is living, and that his health is not at all injured 
by the dreadful sufferings he endured in the Temple. My convic- 
tion, on this subject, is so strong, that I have not feared to declare 
it openly to the king himself, and to tell him that the crown he 
wears does not belong to him." 

Again, M. Labreli de Fontaine, librarian to the Duchess D'Or- 
leans, in a pamphlet, entitled—" Disclosui^es respecting the exist- 
in the department of Puy-de-dome, of the Upper Loire, of Cantal of the Aveyron, and 
Lozere to the Procureur Syndic of the district of Thiers. I have heard Ojardias, he 
has justified his conduct, the charge made against him is false, I authorize you to 
rescind the orders which detained the child in Barge Real's house, as also any which 
may have issued against Ojardias's liberty, 

" Health and Fraternity. 
" Signed, J. P. Chazel. 

" A true copy. 

" The Procureur Syndic of the 
" District of Thiers. 
" Signed, Bruyere Barante." 



160 THE LOST PRINCE. 

ence of Lou^s XVII.," says, " The JBrst article of the secret treaty of 
Paris, 1814, explains the manner in which the powers of Europe 
had permitted the CouDt de Provence to occupy the throne of 
France ; the following is the substance of the article : 

" That although the high contracting powers, the Allied Sove- 
reigns, have no certain evidence of the death of the son of Louis 
XVI., the state of Europe and its political interests, require that 
they should place at the head of the government in France, I^ouis 
Xavier, Count de Provence, ostensibly with the title of king; but, 
being in fact, considered in their secret transactions only as Regent 
of the kingdom for the two years next ensuing, reserving to them- 
selves during that period to obtain every possible certainty, con- 
cerning a fact which must ultimately determine who shall be the 
sovereign of France." A person of his position would scarcely 
make such a statement without good authority. He also asserts, 
that when he was himself at Venice, in 1812, Signior Erizzo, for- 
merly a senator of Venice, showed him a proclamation of the Count 
de Provence, dated from Verona, the 14th October, 1797, in which 
he only assumed the title of Regent of the kingdom, and justly 
asks, " if Louis XVII. died in the Temple, why did not his uncle 
assume the title of king." M. Gruau, declares that, " It is known 
from good authority, that during the reign of Louis XVIIL, a 
court sycophant had a false certificate fabricated of the death of 
the Dauphin in foreign'lands after his escape.^''* 

The " Journal of Commerce, "„ 3d December, 1832, in a re- 
view of a work, entitled — " Secret History of the Directory," 
says : — 

" It appears certain that the public has been deceived as to the 
real time and place of the death of Louis XVII. Camhaceres 
aclcnowledges this^ hut would never reveal what he leneio on this point. 
We shall be led to believe there was some great mystery con- 
cerning it, when we remember with what consideration the 

♦ Percival, p. 185. 



NAUNDORFF AND RICHEMONT. 161 

restored Bourbons treated this regicide, and the eagerness with 
which they took possession of his papers after his death." 

In a pamphlet published by M. Bourbon le Blanc, there is an 
attestation by M. Pezold, notary of Orossen, in which he says: "I 
have found fifty documents fully substantiating the existence of his 
majesty; for instance, the manner and by whom he was taken 
from the Temple. I can prove all that I state ; and there is not a 
sovereign in Europe wJio did not in 1818 receive letters from me on 
the subject. I will always affirm that he was carried off from the 
Temple by one of my friends. 

" Pro vera copia in fidem publicam testatur, a 15 Januar, 1832. 
"Signed, "Pezold, Notar." 

M. Pezold, it must be remarked, did not pretend to affirm any- 
thing concerning identity ; his statements respect the fact of escape. 
He died of poison. There is another important piece of testimony 
contained in the pamphlet of Labreli de Fontaine. 

"M. Abeille, medical pupil under Dr. Desault at the time of his 
violent death, has declared to whoever would hear it in France 
and in the United States, where he has since sought refuge, that 
the murder of the doctor immediately followed the report he made 
to the effect that the child to whom they had introduced him was 
not the Dauphin. The ' American Bee,' edited by M. Chandron, 
mentions this fact in an article inserted in 1817. Madame Delisle, 
an inJiabitant of ^&w York, and now in Paris, has declared that 
she heard this circumstance mentioned by M, Abeill6 himself, and 
has, moreover, read the above cited article in the American journal." 

But, one of the most important items of evidence is, that a boy, 
purporting to be the Dauphin, was, in 1795, actually delivered 
into the hands of Charette. The proof of this is partly historic, 
and partly rests on the testimony adduced by M. Gruau, the 
advocate of Naundorff; but, as the fact directly overthrows the 
claims of the latter, and the bearing of it was perceived by M. 



162 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Gruau, we may accept his evidence, though unable to fathom the 
motives which led him to produce it. 

1. There is, extant, a proclamation of Chare tte, cited by Labreli 
de Fontaine, towards the close of 1795, addressed to his army, in 
which he speaks of Louis XVII. as being then in his camp, and 
asks his followers — " Will you abandon to the caprice of fortune, 
to the uncertainty of events, the royal orphan whom you swore to 
defend — or, rather, lead him captive in the midst of you, conduct 
him to the assassins of his father, and cast at their feet the head 
of your innocent king." 

2. A friend of Gruau's, who served in the army of Charette, 
remembered to have seen a child who was shown to the Vendeean 
army as Louis XVII. 

3. Another royalist, cited by Gruau, declared that he, himself, 
"delivered Louis XVII. into the hands of Charette;" adding — 
" By what means General Charette and I obtained possession of 
him, and where we took him to — this is what I shall not hesitate 
to prove, when the proper time is come. Till then, a solemn oath 
binds me to silence." Now Graau, Naundorff's advocate, states 
that this testimony does not refer to the real Dauphin. But, look 
at the position in which it places Naundorff. He says, that, being 
the true Dauphin, he saw Charette in 1795. Why Charette so 
easily allowed him to escape his hands, he does not say. Now, 
either he was, or was not, the child mentioned above, as being in 
the Vedeean camp. If he was that child, lie was not " the real 
Dauphin," according to the confession of his advocate, and stands 
also convicted of falsehood, in the details of his story. If he were 
not, then it will be impossible to explain how Charette, being per- 
sonally acquainted with the true Prince, should allow himself to be 
so deceived immediately after, as to receive a pretender into his 
camp. Percival feels the full difficulty of the case, and confesses 
that he cannot " satisfy the curiosity which may be felt as to the 
motives which led " to the production of such testimony. 

On reviewing the facts presented in this involved case, the 



NAUNDORFF AND RICHEMONT. 163 

obscurity clears away sufficiently to enable us to discern distinctly 
the following truths. It appears : — 

1. That, Naundorff was an impostor, because— 1. There is a radi- 
cal discrepancy between the two accounts given by him of his 
escape from the Temple, in one of which he represents himself to 
have seen a wooden doll substituted for hun before the introduc- 
tion of the dumb child ; and, in the other, to have seen, at the 
same time and place, the immediate substitution of the child him- 
self. 

2. The account, given by him, of his interview with Oharette, 
cannot be made to tally with the evidence adduced and vouched 
for by his advocate, respecting the presence of a child, supposed to' 
be Louis XVII., in the Vendeean army. 

8. The accounts, he gave of his early history, vary so much from 
each other, at different periods of his life, at one time represent- 
ing him to have been in America at the moment when, according 
to another statement, he was on the continent of Europe, that 
one or the other must be fictitious. 

4. His conduct, in the affair of Martin, proves him to have been 
a deceiver. The man who was on such intimate terms with the 
protecting angel of France, is of veracity too etherial for ordinary 
credence. 

II. That, ITaundorff, thougn an impostor, had facts as the basis of 
his deception, and was in possession of same state secret, and 
some documents of importance, which enabled him to carry on the 
deception, because — 

1. He was denied by the French government a legal hearing, 
which was not only granted to, but forced upon, the other impos- 
tors ; was- subjected to attempts against his life, and compelled by 
the authorities to leave France to prevent investigation. 

2. The conduct of the Duchess D'Angoul^me showed his case 
embarrassed her, and she confessed that though he was an impos- 



164 THE LOST PRINCE. 

tor, yet there were circumstances which might, in the eyes of the 
French government, render his assassination expedient. The inter- 
view between her and the King of Prussia, in relation to him, 
proves the importance attached to his pretensions ; and all these 
things in connection, are only consistent with the idea of dangerous 
truth lying beneath the falsehood of his individual claim. 

3. He undeniably had the means of deceiving persons so compe- 
tent to judge as Madame de Eambaud, St. Hilaire, St. Didier, and 
others, and showed an acquaintance with facts, known solely to the 
initiated, explicable only on the ground that he had been behind 
the scenes, or obtained authentic information of things hidden 
from the public eye. 

HI. That, the secret which gave him political importance as an 
impostor, did not relate to himself but to some other person, 
because — 

1. He confessed as much in his letter to the Duchess D'Angou- 
leme, when required to give an account of his escape from the 
Temple, by saying, that prudence forbade him to commit to paper 
the mystery which enveloped some other child in the Temple, 
which child, it is every way probable, was Louis XVII. 

2. In the opinion of the Prussian court, whom Naundorff 
acknowledged to be in the secret of his life, the facts in his case 
only went to show that he knew the true Dauphin. 

lY. That, it seems'to be a historic fact, that a child purporting to 
be Louis XVIL, was actually in the possession of Charette, in 
1795, and afterwards disappeared, no one knows where. 

Y, That the government was aware of the fact of the Prince's 
escape, because: 1. the police records of the time show that orders 
were issued for the arrest of Louis XYII. 2. M. Gueriviere was 
arrested by the police, on the charge of being the Dauphin, while 
travelling in a carriage with the agent of the Prince de Oond^ ; 



NAUNDORFF AND RICHEMONT. 165 

and botli of these circumstances confirm Naundorff's story, that 
carriages with children were sent out in difierent directions, for 
the purpose of baffling pursuit, and tend to prove that he was, by 
some means, conversant with the events connected with the 



VI. That, Naundorff intimates his knowledge of the fact, that a 
child, said to be Louis XVII., was sent to America, that a certain 

Mr. B was engaged in the transaction, that he was in concert 

with a lady, formerly a member of the queen's household, and that 
they had with them a young girl. 

VII. That it is shown by the statement of Madame de Ram- 
baud, that Louis XVII. had on his arm a crescent-shaped scar, the 
result of inoculation. 

The following points, which it is not necessary to specify sepa- 
rately, were also brought out by the discussion of Naundorff's 
claims — viz. that the existence of Louis XVII. was not only sus- 
pected but a well-known fact, admitted in the best informed 
circles, and by the agents and intimates of Louis XVIII. and the 
Duchess D'Angoul^me ; that in 1797, Louis XVIII. signed a pro- 
clamation as Regent, which was seen by Labreli de Fontaine, at 
Venice, that at the Restoration of the Bourbons the allied powers 
declared there was no proof of the death of Louis XVII. ; and 
that M. Abeille, pupil of Desault, solemnly declared that that phy- 
sician had been murdered. 

Taking all the circumstances of N'aundorff's history into conside- 
ration, I do not think that you can harmonize them, and reduce 
them to their true proportions, but by some theory which will not 
vary far from the following, which I propose as the most probable 
view of his life and character, and most consistent with facts 
which are proved. 

I conceive him, then, to have been one of the boys made use of 



166 THE LOST PRINCE. 

at the time of the Dauphin's escape to personate him, and selected 
for the purpose on account of his Bourbon features, which may be 
traceable as a native of Versailles or Paris, to illegitimate Bourbon 
blood — furnished with credentials and information to enable him to 
act his part plausibly — conveyed to Charette, and exhibited to his 
army as the Prince, whom he continued to represent until the 
trick was discovered, having personally learned the general outline 
of the real Dauphin's destiny, and the names of the agents by 
whom he was removed. He was probably imprisoned to conceal 
his secret — and afterwards reduced to a wandering and necessitous 
life, but retained documents and letters originally given him to 
play his part, and which admitted him to the knowledge of many 
of the incidents of the private life of the royal family. 

The journals and papers of Marie Antoinette and the Princess 
Elizabeth, were taken from them, during their imprisonment in the 
Temple ;* and if any of these, by some of the accidents of the times, 
fell into his possession, they would sufficiently account for his fami- 
liarity with recondite incidents. The documents delivered to Prince 
Hartenburg probably revealed to the eyes of diplomatists the true 
nature of his case, and may have induced them to watch him 
as one who might be dangerous. Meanwhile, his early adventures 
moulded his mind and destiny — a man of one idea, he prepared 
himself through life to play his part, so that he became at last "bien 
habile," and gathered from all available sources all that could give 
consistency to his pretensions. Possessor of a secret which might 
shake thrones, he could not rest till he tried its potency in evoking 
strife. He does not seem to have had any settled plan — but to have 
shaped his course by circumstances. When he first came to Paris, 
he is described by St. Didier as very timid and shy — but success 
soon emboldened him, and he made use, with equal facility, of the 
fanatic falsehood of Martin and of the sincere and honorable devo- 
tion of Madame de Rambaud and M. St. Hilaire. With the talents 
of a fortune-teller, he might easily draw forth information while 

* Olery. 



NAUNDORFF AND RICHEMONT. 167 

seeming to impart it, and make a conversation with one the source 
of a revelation to another. He had judgment to perceive the strength 
of his position, and tact to avail himself of it. He had nothing to 
hazard. The French authorities had all to lose. He could safely 
appeal to the tribunals, because he knew that his appeal would 
never be granted — for his condemnation might have been gained at 
the expense of political destruction, too dear a price to pay for the 
suppression of a charlatan. My impression is, that he desired to 
sell his secret, and bring his adversaries of the two opposite parties 
to terms. Thus, on the one hand, he offered the Duchess D'Angou- 
l^me to make over his rights to the Due de Bourdeaux, and held up 
his knowledge of the mystery which hung over the real Dauphin, 
as an inducement why she should grant an interview — and, on the 
other, he gave hints and indications of the truth, in some instances 
puzzling to his own adherents. After all, finding it most for his ad- 
vantage to retain his secret and maintain his dubious position, he 
gave vent to the swaggering boast, fully characteristic of the swin- 
dler, " I fear nothing, for it is not in the power of any one to prove 
that I am not the son of the martyr king of France, the true orphan 
of the Temple." 

EIOHBMONT. 

A person, named Eichemont, who, for years, has been known as 
one of the most obscure of the Dauphin pretenders, has lately died 
in France, and, it is said that, now he is dead, an attempt will be 
made to prove that he was actually the son of Louis XYI. I return 
my thanks to the "Tribune" for calling my attention to the article in 
the "London Atlas," on this subject, which otherwise I should not 
have seen, and hope that it and other papers will advise us of any 
facts which may transpire on the other side of the Atlantic, or of any 
suggestions contained in European publications. A great change 
has come over the Parisian letter writers, within a few months. 
On the first agitation of this subject, at the beginning of the year, 
nothing was more certain than the death of Louis XVH., in tlie 



168 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Temple, in 1795. But, now, it is admitted that he did not die, tliat 
the Convention was deceived — and that the archives of the police 
prove he escaped shortly before January 8, 1795. This fact may, 
therefore, now be considered historically beyond dispute. The 
existence of the decree of the French government to arrest Louis 
XVII. after his asserted death, is admitted by Mrs. Romer.* 

The story of Richemont is, in some respects, the counterpart of 
that of ITaundorff. Neither of them pretended to be the child who 
was visited by Desault, and who, up to the 1st of June, was known 
to be the Prince. But there was this difference between them — 
Naundorff did not leave the Temple till the day of the burial — Riche- 
mont escaped so long ago as the good old times when Madame 
Simon held sway, and was removed, with her furniture, in a basket 
of clothes. But how does this story of Richemont tally with the 
order given to the police, on the 8th of June ? 

Is it credible that, if Louis XVII. had been a year out of the 
Temple, the whole police of France would then be set to work to 
arrest him, just then escaping, in a postchaise; or that, out of the 
hundreds of acting commissaries and other officials, who had seen 
the captive, not one had discovered the fraud until this identical 
8th June? 

I can see no reason for the shadow of a doubt, that the child 
represented to be Louis XVII. up to the beginning of June, was 
actually so. His identity is proved — 

1. By the marks upon his body. 

2. By the recognition of Desault, who knew him, and never 
expressed a doubt, during the month he attended the child, as to 
his being the Prince. 

3. By the picture of Bellanger, which is confessed to be that of 
the Dauphin. 

But, establish this fact, and the pretensions of both Naundorff 
and Richemont go to the ground; for each asserts himself to be 
not the child whom Desault visited. 

* Filia Dolorosa, p. 476. 



NAUNDORFF AND RICHEMONT. 169 

Nothing can be more wiTiatitral and absurd than the account of 
the interview between Eichemont and the Duchess D'Angonl^me ; 
which the correspondent of the " Atlas" says, he himself heard 
from Madame Chateaubriand, provided the words attributed to the 
duchess, are considered as referring to one she deemed her brother. 
Under such a construction, the story carries falsehood on its face, 
no matter who tells it — give them a different sense, and I have no 
objection to it. It is as follows : " Madame Chateaubriand, whose 
truth has never been questioned, has told me the circumstances of this 
interview, at which, by virtue of her office, she was present. The 
duchess was walking on the terrace of Versailles, when the Prince 
de Conde, coming up the marble steps of the parterre, suddenly 
appeared before her, leaning on the arm of the Baron de Eiche- 
mont — the latter fell at the feet of the duchess, who seemed for a 
moment overcome with emotion. The baron spoke in a low tone, 
recalling circumstances which had taken place in their early youth, 
and which were unknown to the world beside. The duchess drew 
back presently, and, gazing at the baron from head to foot, she 
exclaimed, " Oo^ sir, I cannot call you brother — you are my 
mother''s murderer P The idea intended to be conveyed, is that, 
the duchess recognised Eichemont as her brother — but would not 
acknowledge him as such, on account of the paper which he had 
been compelled to sign in prison, charging Marie Antoinette with 
incest. The duchess was a woman of too much good sense and 
right feeling ever to entertain such sentiments — ^the child was the 
mere passive instrument of the brutality of others. Her memoirs 
show that she never dreamed of imputing to him as a crime, what 
was merely his misfortune. Besides which, the charge of incest 
did no harm to Marie Antoinette. No one believed it. It rather 
aided her, and came near causing her acquittal. If the duchess 
did utter those words, it is most certain they bore no relation to 
her brother ; and that, instead of proving anything in favor of Eiche- 
mont, they settle the question against him. It is not impossible 
that he, as well as Naundorff, may have been some child con- 

8 



lYO THE LOST PRINCE. 

nected with the Temple, and that the duchess did recognize him as 
one who had been instrumental, on some occasion, in inflicting 
injury on her mother, perhaps in preventing her escape. This is 
far the most natural conclusion. The duchess, we have seen, 
indignantly rejected his portrait, when offered her by St. Didier, 
saying, " Fo, sir, that is not the thing." 

After the interview was over, she took the arm of Madame 
Chateaubriand, "and pushed open the glass door of the grand 
salon with such violence, that several panes of glass fell to the 
ground. She did did not sleep that night, she did not even retire 
to her own room, but paced the floor of the drawing-room till 
morning, now and then sinking on her knees in prayer, and often 
stopping in her restless walk to lean her head against the wall and 
sob aloud." It seems undeniable that some deep chord of feeling 
was stirred. Knowing, as I have evidence she did, her brother's 
existence, in America, but compelled from state motives to conceal 
the secret, every fresh attempt at imposture was calculated to 
wound her spirit most acutely ; and this, together with memories 
of the sufferings of departed years, awakened by the incident, 
is quite sufiicient to account for her agony of mind, without 
attributing to her the absurdity of calling her 'brother tlie murderer 
of her mother. There are some things impossible — and this is one 
of them. 

Richemont, like Naundorff, attributed all the assassinations 
among people of rank in Europe, to acquaintance with his secret, 
and favor of his pretensions. This is cheap kind of evidence. 
But it amounts to nothing. lOeber and Pichegru, and the Duo 
de Berri, and the Prince de Oonde might be assassinated, but 
it proves nothing in favor of the pretensions of either impostor. 
As to the offer of Louis Philippe, by letter, to give the Princess 
Louise, afterwards Queen of Belgium, to Richemont, we will 
wait till the letter is produced. If he had such a thing, he would 
have shown it during his life-time, and, besides, would scarcely 
have rejected an offer which would, necessarily, have been 



NAUNDORFF AKD RICHEMONT. 1*71 

accompanied by the public recognition of his claims, if lie icere 
the Dauphin, and by his ultimate accession to the throne. But I 
care not what documents may be produced under the circum- 
stances. Such things only prove their own existence, nothing 
more. So long as Eichemont's own story disagrees fundamentally 
with known facts, all the documents in the world would not prove 
identity. For this is a case of aliM. Eichemont was not in the 
Temple in June, 1795. Louis XVII. was in the Temple until the 
first weeTc in June, 1795. No, Eichemont was both an impostor, 
and, in all probability, an instrument of Louis Philippe; and, 
should the attempt ever be made to silence the truth respecting 
the living, by setting up the baseless claims of the dead, it will 
only add a tenfold force to every argument in favor of the former. 

Here I must let the curtain fall upon the Old "World, leaving 
everything uncertain, unfinished, mysterious. A great wrong has 
been done, and we can clearly trace the whole course of motives 
and events up to a given point, and then there is an abrupt cessa- 
tion, with only, here and there, an indication of a dark secret, to 
which the published annals of Europe afford no clue. Like one 
of those rivers which suddenly lose themselves in the earth, and 
roll their tide along in subterranean darkness, the fate of Louis 
XYII. is, for more than half a century, hidden from the eyes of 
men, and every attempt hitherto made to unriddle the enigma of 
his destiny, only deepens the mystery, and carries the mind into 
more inextricable labyrinths, which, like the mazes of some 
primeval forest, afford no outlet. 

BND OF THE FIRST PAET. 



PAKT II. 

THE WIGWAM, THE CAMP, AND THE CHURCH. 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 



IIB' 



CHAPTER X. 

ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 

Science has remarked mysterious affinities between the Old 
World and the ISTew, and there are social yearnings, historic ties and 
sympathies of unearthly brotherhood, which unite hands and 
hearts across the deep, ^nd make men love each other with an 
intenser love, because they at once are and are not one. The two 
continents were made for each other. There is the battle-field — 
here the asylum from strife — and yet it is from those old ensan- 
guined soils, that the men, the principles, and the faith have been 
derived, which make the New World glorious and peaceful. It 
will add another strange hnk to the chain of union, if it can be 
shown that, republican America numbers among her citizens, one 
born to be a monarch, in Europe; and that the Protestant Episco- 
pal church has, in the same individual, a minister and a 
missionary, who, but for reverses, unparalleled in history, would 
have wielded the forces of a rival communion. 

In the year 1T95, a French family, calling themselves De Jardin 
or De Jourdan, arrived in Albany, direct from France. Refugees 
were crowding at that time to America, but there were circum- 
stances connected with these persons which attracted unusual 
attention. The family consisted of a lady, a gentleman, and two 
cliildren. The two former, though they bore the same name, did 
not seem to be, nor were considered, as husband and wife. While 
)[;ulanie de Jardin dressed with elegance. Monsieur was very 
plainly attired, and acted in almost a menial capacity. Much mys- 
tery was observed concerning the children under their care, who 
were never taken out in public. The eldest was a girl, named 



176 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Louise, the youngest a boy of nine or ten years of age, "VTho was 
called, simply, Monsieur Louis. He was scarcely seen, except by a 
few ladies and children. He did not appear to notice those who 
saw him. Madame de Jardin, who had in her possession many 
articles which belonged to the deceased king and queen of France, 
and among them some gold plate, on which was engraven the 
royal arms, stated, in familiar conversation, that she had been a 
maid of honor to Marie Antoinette, and was separated from her on 
the terrace of the palace, prior to her imprisonment in the Temple. 
She was in a state of high mental excitement, and while speaking 
of the events of the Kevolntion, would wildly play the " Marseil- 
laise," and then burst into tears. The children were considered by 
those on terms of familiar intercourse with Madame de Jardin, and 
who had opportunities of judging which others had not, to belong 
to the royal family of France. The little boy, is said, by a highly 
respectable and intelligent lady, who saw him under peculiar cir- 
cumstances, calculated to excite her attention, to resemble, in the 
general contour of his face, the Eev. Eleazar Williams. The 
De Jardins, after remaining a short time in Albany, for what pur- 
pose was not publicly known, sold most of their effects, some 
articles of which are still, or recently were, in that city, and then 
suddenly disappeared, no one knew whither. Conjecture, for a 
time, aroused and excited, fell at length asleep, for want of mate- 
rial to work on, but the mystery attending these incidents, has 
caused them to be vividly remembered to the present time. 

An interesting letter on this subject from Mrs. Dudley, of 
Albany, a near connexion of Governor Seymour, whose character 
and social position place her testimony beyond reach of question, 
will be found in the Appendix, and repay perusal. (Appendix D.) 
Learning from a friend that she was in possession of information, 
which might throw some light on the subject, I called on her, in 
company with the Rev. Dr. Kip, now Missionary Bishop of Cali- 
fornia, and Mr. Williams, when she furnished me with the particu- 
lars detailed above, and afterwards threw them into a written form. 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. ITV 

The reader, as he advances, will be able to judge of the con- 
nexion of these facts with the thread of our narrative, but before I 
leave them, I would call his attention to the coincidence, which, 
however, can scarcely escape him, between these incidents and the 
particulars obscurely given by Naundorff * In both statements 
occur the lady of Marie Antoinette's household, the gentleman in 
very plain clothes, and the little girl. These things coupled with 
the intimation given by the pretender that the Prince was sent to 
America, and the exact correspondence in time are certainly strik- 
ing. But from Albany let us now travel, by an obvious route, to 
Ticonderoga, and observe what happened there in the same year. 

There is still living, at about a hundred years of age, a respect- 
able Indian chief, of whose character and veracity I have full assu- 
rance from the Hon. B. Skenondogh Smith, of Philadelphia, who 
has known him upwards of thirty years. His name is John Sken- 
ondogh O'Brien, and he is the son of an Irishman and an Oneida 
woman. He was sent to France for education, and returned to 
this country during the American Revolution. In the hunting 
season, he was frequently, with other Indians, in the vicinity of 
Lake George, and, while at Ticonderaga, in 1795, two Frenchmen, 
one of them having the appearance of a Romish priest, came there, 
bringing a weak sickly boy, in a state of mental imbecility, whom 
they left among the Indians. Being well acquainted with French, 
O'Brien conversed with the men, and learned from them that the 
boy was born in France. He was adopted by an Iroquois chief, 
named Thomas Williams, and O'Brien, who has since repeatedly 
seen him in youth and manhood, testifies, on oath, that he is the 
same person with the Rev. Eleazar Williams. (Appendix E.) 
Kow, it is true we have no means of demonstrating that the boy 
called Monsieur Louis, by Madame de Jardin, at Albany, in 1795, is 
the boy left at Ticonderoga, in 1795, by the two Frenchmen ; but, 
whoever considers the coincidences of circumstance, time, place, 
. age, mental condition, and bodily resemblance, must admit that 

* Vide page 149 
4=^ 



178 THE LOST PRINCE. 

apart from all other testimony, it is highly probable. But^ wTio&cer 
Eleazar Willia'tns 1)6^ he is a native of France. This point is esta- 
Mishcd on the threshold^ 

To exhibit the social influences by which he was now sur- 
rounded, it will be necessary here to give some account of the 
origin of the family by whom the child, henceforth known as 
Eleazar Williams, was adopted. 

Among the romantic stories of former days of trial and hardship, 
which charm the imagination, and, by contrast with present pros- 
perity, gratify the pride of New England, there are few which 
appeal more strongly to our sympathies, than the sufferings of the 
family of the Rev. John Williams, at the inroad of the French and 
Indians on the town of Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1T04. It forms 
the historic basis of my narrative of events in this country, and is 
full, of the interest whicli pertains to tales of frontier life in half- 
rooted colonies. The original settlers of iN'ew England looked upon 
the Indians in mucli the same light that the children of Israel, 
under Joshua, viewed the idolatrous Canaanites. In the pages of 
the inspired warrior, they found a full vindication alike for cruelty 
and injustice, and the red man repaid at every fit opportunity the 
injuries he had already received, and avenged, beforehand, the 
approaching extermination of his race, by ceaseless inroads on the 
colonists. Deerfield was first settled in 1671, and the Indians 
treated in the customary manner. The Eastern, or, as they were 
afterwards called, the St. Francois Indians, had owned the land, 
and entertained a bitter hostility towards those who had gained 
possession of their territory. Before the close of the century, they 
made many attacks upon the place, which, being the most remote 
settlement on the Connecticut river, was peculiarly exposed to their 
incursions. In 1697, an attack was made on Deerfield, but was 
repulsed by the inhabitants, headed by their pastor, the Rev. John 
Williams. But, though battled, the Indians did not relinquish their 
design. In the spring of 1703, some of the "praying" or Christian 
Mohawks, brought intelligence to Albany, of an intended incursion 



ADOPTION AKD EDUCATION. I'ZO 

on Deerfield, and Lord Oornbury, then governor of New York, 
communicated the tidings to the governor of Massachusetts. A 
guard of twenty soldiers was sent to the village, and every precau- 
tion taken against surprise. But, there was a presentiment in the 
mind of Williams that the town would be destroyed, and in his 
serinons he frequently warned the people of the coming calamity.* 

The governor of Canada, M. de. Vaudreuil, sent a body of 
French and Indians into New England, who committed considerable 
ravages, and slew several hundred men. The New Englanders, in 
their turn, in the fall of the year, made an incursion into Canada, 
and killed a great number of the Indians. This was the immediate 
cause of th'e attack on Deerfield. The chiefs applied for assistance 
to M. de Vaudreuil, who sent them two hundred men under the 
command of Le Sieur Heutel de Rouville, who, accompanied by 
a large body of Indians, made his way to Deerfield.t John Wil- 
liams was a man of sincere piety, more than ordinary attainments 
in literature, a strong mind, and entire devotion to his flock, which, 
in those days, was like a New England pastor's family. He was in 
the prime of life, married to an excellent woman, the father of 
seven or eight children, with a good farm, and every prospect of 
uninterrupted happiness. 

Such was his condition when he retired to rest, on the 28th 
February, 1T04. About daybreak the village was attacked— the 
sleeping sentinels gave no alarm — the sound of axes and hammers 
at their doors and windows was the first notification of danger. 
Williams, who combined the valor of the soldier with the piety of 
the clergyman, had barely time to seize his pistols from the head 
of his bed, Avhenr the Indians were in his room. He fired, but as 
he shed no blood, his life was spared. Two of his children were 
murdered in cold blood, his house set on fire, and himself, his wife, 
and their remaining children, bound and driven away, in company 
Vv-ith about a hundred other captives. 

The snow was knee deep when they set out on their journey of 

* Kr.tchinson's Hist. Mass. vol. ii. t Charlevoix, vol. II. p. 890. 



180 THE LOST PRINCE. 

three liimdred miles, towards a " Popish country " — the darkest 
picture which could be presented to a New England mind. It was 
not long before Mrs. Williams was murdered. " I overtook her," 
says her husband, in his simple and touching narrative, " I walked 
with her to help her on her journey. On the way we discoursed 
of the happiness of those who had a right to a house not made 
with hands,, and God for a father and friend, as also that it was our 
reasonable duty, quietly to submit to the will of God, and say, the 
will of the Lord be done." He was separated from her, and soon 
heard that, having fallen down in wading through a swift icy 
stream, her savage captor had buried his hatchet in her head.* 

"Williams lived now only for his children. But a few hours 
before, in the enjoyment of happiness, he had nothing but the rem- 
nant of a slaughtered and captive family. His wife and two 
children lay unburied in the snow, and his surviving children were 
separated from him. 

After travelling with tremendous speed, he arrived in the neigh- 
borhood of Montreal, and was courteously treated by the French, 
who, with the ready hospitality of their nation, did everything to 
alleviate his sorrows. But, in Canada a new series of afflictions 
began, more trying to the spirit of the Puritan, than even his losses 
and afflictions. He was compelled to attend mass, and wearied with 
efforts to convert him. These he could resist himself, but not so his 
children. His youngest daughter, Eunice, a child of seven, who had 
been tenderly carried by her captor during the whole journey, was 
now in the hands of the Jesuits, and though the governor of Mon- 
treal used his influence in his behalf, it was with great difficulty 
that he obtained permission to see her. She had not yet forgotten 
her catechism, and was anxious to return to her father — but, not 
long after, he found that, by mixing continually with Indians, she 
had lost the English language, and had no desh-e to be redeemed 
from captivity. 

He remained in Canada until 1706, when he was ransomed and 

* Redeemed Captive. 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 181 

carried to Boston, from whence, after an interval, he returned to 
his old parish of Deerfield, where he spent the rest of his life. 

One of his sons in the interval, had embraced the Romish faith, 
but eventually returned to Protestantism, and all that survived of 
the family were restored, with the exception of Eunice, who had 
entirely adopted Indian life and habits, and had no desire to leave 
her new associations of nation and religion. She married an 
Tndian of the name of Turoges, which is probably a corruption of 
De Rogers, by whom she had three children, one son and two 
daughters. 

The loss of Eunice and her adoption of Romanism, were calami- 
ties from which the afflicted father never recovered. Day and 
night, in public and in private, she was the object of his prayers. 
Her conversion to the simple faith of her ancestors, became the 
passionate desire of the whole community of Deerfield. Those 
who are acquainted with New England life, can easily understand 
how it was fanned into an hereditary flame by prayer meetings and 
sermons, and only glowed more intensely as the lapse of time ren- 
dered its accomplishment more hopeless. There is a tenacity in 
the New England mind which social habits and religious 
enthusiasm serve alike to encourage, and every effort which per- 
suasion, affection, prayer, and faith could put in operation, was 
tried, and tried in vain. The friends of the captive had to contend 
with purpose as determined, and religious zeal as unbending as 
their own. Mr. Williams died in 1729, but, after his death, the 
desire for the conversion of Eunice continued as unabated as ever. 
Before his decease, she had once visited Deerfield, and consented 
to appear at the meeting house in English dress, but, in the after- 
noon, she resumed the blanket, and ever after continued inflexible 
in her attachment to the dress, customs, and religion in which she 
had been educated. Still her relatives and former neighbors did not 
despair. In 1740, she was induced again t© visit Deerfield. She 
repeated the visit in 1741. Her voluntary coming caused great 
hope and excitement among her friends, and a final effort was 



182 THE LOST PRINCE. 

made for her recovery. A time was set apart " for prayer and for 
the revival of religion, and on behalf of Mrs. Eunice, the daughter of 
Rev. John "Williams." " Some of you well know," said the preacher, 
on the occasion, " how long she has been the subject of prayer. 
What numberless prayers have been put up to God for her by many 
holy souls now in Heaven, as well as many who yet remain on 
earth. How many groans and fervent prayers can these ears wit- 
ness to have been uttered and breathed forth with a sort of burning 
and unquenchable ardor, from the pious and holy soul of her dear ' 
father, now with God. I know not that I ever heard him pray 
after his own return from captivity without a remembrance of her, 
that God would return her to his sanctuary. God did not give 
him leave to see the performance of his wishes and desires for her 
— but he now encourages us to hope that by the mighty power of 
his providence and grace, he will give us an extraordinary convic- 
tion that he is a God that heareth prayer."* 

It was thus in crowded assemblies, and, with all due collateral 
associations and influences, that the natural desire for the re-con- 
version of Eunice, was fanned into a flame of enthusiasm, which, 
bequeathed by one religious gathering to another, was still felt in 
its efi'ects, when she, herself, was in the grave. All the zeal of 
her friends was unavailing, and she died as she had lived. 

John de Rogers, her son, was killed at Lake George, in 1758, 
in battle between the English and Indians. Her daughter, Catha- 
rine, married an Indian, named Rice. Mary was married to an 
English physician, named Williams. They had one son, Thomas 
Williams, who married an Indian woman, named Mary Ann 
Konwatewenteta, on the 7th January, 1779. 

During the Revolutionary War, Thomas Williams fought on the 
British side, and commanded an Indian detachment. He was pre- 
sent at the naval conflict on Lake Champlain, near Yalcour Island, 
between General Waterbury and Governor Oarleton, and operated 
on the shore, with a body of Indians, intending to surprise the 

* Redeemed Captive. 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 183 

American forces, should they attempt a landing. lie accompanied 
the army of General Burgoyne to Saratoga, and attended the 
council held by him, at Bouquet river, in August, 17T7. After the 
retreat of the American army, he followed, with his Indians, in 
pursuit, in company with General Frazer's detachment, and was 
engaged in the skirmish at Fort Anne, and also in the action at 
Bennington. The principal service, however, which he rendered 
to the British, was in the two actions between Burgoyne and Gates, 
at Saratoga. He escaped from the field, with his detachment, and 
returned into Canada. In the year 1800, he had eight children, 
whose names w^ere all registered in the records of the Romish 
Church at Caughnawaga, and three others were subsequently born, 
whose names were also found there. The name of Eleazar, the 
adopted child, is not among them. (Appendix F.) The habits of 
Thomas Williams w^ere very erratic. Though his usual residence 
was at Caughnawaga, he paid an annual hunting visit to Lake 
George, and was often absent from home several years together. 

Eleazar was, for a long time, in delicate health, and large quanti- 
ties of Indian decoctions were given him, by which means his 
physical condition was much improved, and, though still unsound 
in mind, he took delight in playing with the other children. He 
accompanied Thomas Williams to Lake George several years in 
succession. The Indian hunting grounds were occupied, year after 
year, by nearly the same persons, and O'Brien remembers that 
Eleazar, some considerable time after his adoption by the Indians, 
received a severe fall, from a rock, somewhere in the vicinity of 
the Old Fort, i. e., Fort William Henry, at the head of the lake. 
He was taken out of the water with a deep gash on his head, cut 
by a rock beneath the surface. It is from this time that all dis- 
tinct recollection begins. Of this fall itself, he has no remem- 
brance, except as told him by others. The first waking image in 
his mind is the romantic scenery of, Lake George. To enable the 
reader better to understand localities, I give a rude map of the 



184 



THE LOST PRINCE. 



head of the lake, where Thomas "Williams was accustomed to 
encamp. 




Exquisite, in its own still beauty, is the lake, with its ultra- 
marine waters, locked in by rolling and serrated hills, dyed, at this 
season, in green and scarlet, purple and gold, the whole scene pre- 
senting, under a brilliant sun, that exaggeration of color which, in 
a painting, would be deemed unnatural. There are few spots 
which awaken so many sad, yet thrilling, historic recollections. 
Not far distant, is the rock where the Sachem Hendrick, and Col. 
Williams, an honored ancestor of the Williams' family, were slain, 
by Dieskau, in 1755. Then, there is the Bloody Pond, and Fort 
Gage, and Fort George, and Fort William Henry, each with their 
own heroic memories. But, if history shall bear me out in the 
conclusion I would draw from the tale I have to tell, there will be 
added to them all, a story scarce equalled in the legendary past, 
and worthy of the scene. 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 185 

At the end of the last century, there were at the head of the 
lake no settled habitations. The beach, which had once been alive 
with armies, was deserted, and the dismantled fortifications were 
slowly crumbling. But all along the shore, to the West and South, 
were choice spots for the rude Indian wigwams, under the shade 
of lofty trees, and on the smooth sloping greensward, cleared of the 
tangled underbrush. In the fall of the year, there was quite a busy 
scene where the traders came to barter their goods for furs. The 
market-ground as we may call it, was on the clearing near the site 
of Fort William Henry— and it was in the nighborhood of this that 
Thomas Williams generally encamped. In rowing round the basin, 
and comparing the statements of Skenondogh with the recollections 
of Mr. Williams, and the nature of the localities, it seems probable 
that the spot on which the incident occurred, which led to the res- 
toration of his mind, was in the vicinity of Teal Island, or between 
that and the old Fort. The purple Sierra, whose lofty peaks shut 
in the view to the north east, was the first object of which Mr. Wil- 
liams has any distinct recollection. The gloom that spreads be- 
yond, presents nothing but faint, dreamy, and indistinct remem- 
brances, except in a single instance, in which there is the vivid por- 
traiture of a hideous face, but to which he can attach neither name, 
nor place. He only knows, that it was connected with feelings of 
misery. All else is chaotic confusion, in which Indians roasting 
chestnuts around a fire, are mixed up with dream-like and vague 
images, which elude the effort to grasp them, as realities, of splen- 
did architecture, of troops exercising in a garden, of being in a room 
where there were persons magnificently dressed, and of lying on 
the carpet with his head against the silk dress of a lady, and things 
of a similar character, but all is indistinct and unconnected, like a 
phantom of the night, whereas since he was first roused to an ap- 
prehension of life, on the shores of Lake George, his mind retains 
consecutively and with tenacity all that has transpired. 

The wigwam of Thomas Williams was a small log house, about 
twenty feet square, perhaps a little larger, roofed with bark, leaving 



186 THE LOST PRINCE. 

an opening in the centre to give egress to the smoke from the fire, 
which blazed beneath it, on the floor, in the middle of the apart- 
ment. Around this fire were ranged the beds of the family, com- 
posed -of hemlock boughs, covered with the skins of aninaals taken 
in the chase, bears or deer. As the season closed in, Eleazar, witli 
the other boys, nearly naked, except a check shirt and a handker- 
chief upon his head, occupied himself in filling up the crevices be- 
tween the logs with moss plucked from the trees, to keep the wig- 
wam warm; but, sometimes, when the wind was unfavorable, the 
smoke, unable to ascend through the aperture in the roof, would fill 
the apartment, and Mrs. Williams, after bearing the annoyance as 
long as her Indian stoicism permitted, would rush out in her- blan- 
ket, and destroy the Avork of the poor boys, by pulling away the 
moss, to allow passage to the smoke, through the sides of the wig- 
wam. The fare of the family was as simple as their dwelling-place. 
From cross sticks over the fire, hung a huge kettle in which the 
squaw made soup of pounded corn, flavored with venison. They 
purchased their salt and spirits at Fort Edward. The streams, 
when unfrozen, supplied them with fish, the woods and the moun- 
tains with game. 

Wigwams, such as I have described, were, in the hunting season, 
scattered at intervals, all along the shore of the lake, near its head, 
and it was the habit, when any family got a fresh supply of spirits 
from the fort, to send round and invite the neighboring Indians. 
One of these parties, shortly after the recovery of his reason, is viv- 
idly remembered by Mr, Williams. The Indians arrived from all 
directions, bringing in deer and everything necessary for a feast, and 
waited impatiently for the young men who had been dispatched for 
that which was the soul of the merry-making. At last, about sun- 
set, the war-whoop was heard over the wooded hills, and responded 
to and re-responded by the crowd around the wigwam, till the 
jocund messengers arrived, and the night revel around ' the forest 
fires grew fast and furious. 

Shortly after this, when Eleazar was one day sporting on the 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 187 

lake near Eort "William Henry, in a little wooden canoe, with seve- 
ral other boj^s, two strange gentlemen came np to the encampment 
of Thomas Williams, and took their seats with him upon a log at a 
little distance from the wigwam. AVith natural curiosity, at a cir- 
cumstance which broke in upon the usual monotony of Indian life 
on the hunting grounds, the boys paddled their canoe ashore, and 
strolled up to the encampment to ascertain who the strangers 
were, when Thomas Williams called out, " 'Lazau, this friend of 
yours wishes to speak with you." As he approached, one of the 
gentlemen rose and went off to another Indian encampment. The 
one who remained Avith Thomas Williams, had every indication in 
dress, manners, and language, of being a Frenchman — for Eleazar 
remembers understanding a few words, sufficient to know that he 
spoke in French. He had on a ruffled shirt, his hair was powdered, 
and bore to the child a very splendid appearance. When Eleazar 
came near, the French gentleman advanced several steps to meet him, 
embraced him most tenderly, and when he again sat down on the log, 
made him stand between his legs. In the meantime he shed abun- 
dance of tears, said, " Pauvre gargon," and. continued to embrace him. 
Thomas Williams was, soon after, called to a neighboring wigwam, 
and Eleazar and the Frenchman left alone. The latter continued 
to kiss him and weep, aiid spoke a good deal, seeming anxious 
that he should understand him, which he was unable to do. When 
Thomas Williams returned to them, he asked Eleazar whether 
he knew what the gentleman had said to him, and he replied, 
" InTo." They both left him, and walked off in the direction in 
which the other gentleman had gone. The two gentlemen came 
again the next day, and the Frenchman remained several hours. 
Thomas Williams took him out in a canoe on the lake ; and the 
last which Eleazer remembers was, their all sitting together on a 
log, when the Frenchman took hold of his bare feet and dusty legs 
and examined his knees and ankles closely. Again, the Frenchman 
shed tears, but young Eleazar was quite indifferent, not knowing 



188 THE LOST PRINCE. 

what to make of it. Before the gentleman left, he gave him a piece 
of gold. 

After a few days, Thomas Williams, contrary to his usual 
custom, returned to Caughnawaga, instead of remaining for his 
winter hunt at Lake George. He had not long returned home, 
when, one niglit, Eleazar overheard a conversation between his 
reputed parents, in whose room he slept. Thomas strongly urged 
compliance with a request which had been made to them to allow 
two of their children to go away for education, but his wife 
objected on religious grounds. But when he persisted in the 
demand, she said, " If j^ou will do it, you may send away this 
strange boy ; means have been put into your hands for his educa- 
tion, but, John I cannot part with." Her willingness to sacrifice 
him, and the whole tenor of the conversation, excited suspicions in 
his mind as to his belonging to them, but they soon passed away. 

Though nearly a hundred years had elapsed since the massacre 
at Deerfield, the memory of it was still fresh in the minds of the 
descendants of John Williams, and their friends in Massachusetts. 
Among them was a gentleman named Nathaniel Ely, a deacon in 
the Congregationalist Church, a worthy and intelligent, though 
uneducated, man. Until thirty years of age he had worked on his 
farm, and enjoyed uninterrupted health, when his whole family 
was attacked with sickness, and his mother and three children 
swept at once to the grave. During Mr. Ely's illness, he made 
a vow to God, that if he recovered, " his future life, health, 
property, and everything dear on earth should be consecrated to 
God ;"* and to the best of his ability he fulfilled his vow. He was 
a man of sound, clear understanding, and remarkably methodical 
habits, which latter are evinced by his journal, in which he recorded 
the principal events of every day. He had warmly at heart the 
project of converting the aborigines from Paganism and Eoman- 
ism ; and being related, by marriage, to the family of Eunice Wil- 
* MS. Sermon by Mr. Storrs, preached at Mr. Ely's funeral. 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 189 

liams, felt a deep interest in her descendants. He accordingly 
applied to Thomas Williams for permission to educate two of his 
children as missionaries ; and then the conversation occurred, which 
I have recorded above, between the reputed parents of Eleazar. 
Mrs. Williams at last consented that John, one of her own chil- 
dren, who, according to the baptismal register at Caughnawaga, 
was then seven years old, and Lazar, her adopted child, who was 
many years older, should be sent to Massachusetts. The name of 
the latter, according to Mr. Ely's papers now before me, was either 
Lazar, Lazo, Lazare, Leazer, or Eleazar. It does not occur in the 
baptismal register. 

In regard to his age at this time, there is the same difficulty. In 
one of Mr. Ely's accounts it is said that he was nineteen years of 
age in 1800. But this is evidently incorrect. In another, his age, 
at that time, is stated at thirteen, and in several others, twelve ; 
while a near relative of the family, and a schoolmate of Mr. Wil- 
liams, Mrs. Mary W. Jewett, now residing at 46 Bank street, New 
York, testifies that she was then twelve years of age, and that Mr. 
Williams was about two years her senior. A Romish priest, in an 
affidavit of his own composition, has made his reputed mother 
swear that he was then nine years old. This entire discrepancy 
between all the accounts, shows most conclusively that nothing 
certain was known on the subject. As to the two extreme state- 
ments nine is as absurd as nineteen, nay, more so, as facts, hereafter 
to be recorded, will show. The truth lies in the medium of be- 
tween fourteen and fifteen.* 

A gentlemen, then residing at Long Meadow, remembers the time 
when the two supposed brothers entered the village, dressed in their 
Indian costume, and the entire dissimilarity in their appearance at 
once excited attention. They became the subject of general con- 
versation and conjecture, and there was something so singular and 

* Lazo Williams. Jany, 1800, 19 years of age. In a paper dated December 1802, 
he is then stated to be 15. Thus, " the two lads, one of whom is in the fifteenth, the 
other in the tenth year of his age."— ^^y 3IS/S, (Appendix G.) 



190 THE LOST PRINCE. 

mysterious in the difference between them that those who saw them 
have never forgotten it. (Appendix H.) 

Too late to allow of anything more than the insertion of the fact 
in the text, I have learned that Mr. Ely was, to a great extent, ac- 
quainted with the secret of Eleazar's birth. He certainly knew that 
he was of distinguished origin. Next door to Nathaniel Ely, resided 
his brother, Ethan Ely, who had charge of a niece by name Urania 
Stebbins, now Mrs. Smith, and who is still living at an advanced 
age, at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her son, W. E. Smith. She 
testifies as follows, " Mr. Ely said the names of the boys were Elea- 
zar and John "Williams (in English). The Indians, he said, called the 
former Lazau. Mr. Ely, when remonstrated with concerning the 
boys being brothers, as they looked not alike, said there was some- 
thing about it which he should possibly never reveal, but would 
say this much, that Eleazar Williams was born for a great man, 
and he intended to give him an education to prepare him for the 
station."* I have also been informed by Mr. Stanley Smith, of the 
"Albany Express," who gives me permission to use his name, and 
has frequently stated the fact in his paper, having learned it from 
undoubted authority, that money was transmitted from Erance, to 
the late John R. Bleeker, and devoted to the support of Eleazar. I 
have searched the accounts of this gentleman, in a very casual man- 
ner, however, but could discover no signs of this transaction. 
Without some clue to the parties from whom the money was re- 
ceived, it will be next to impossible to trace the affair. Thomas 
Williams frequently went to Albany, and returned with money in 
his possession, though without ostensible means of procuring it. It 
would seem most natural that the funds should be paid over to him. 
Jacob Vanderheyden, with whom Talleyrand was in communication, 
may, as an Indian trader, have been concerned in the transaction. 
But here we can only conjecture until further developments take 
place. (Appendix 1.) 

Arrived at Long Meadow, Eleazar was under an entirely new 

* Letter from W. E. Smith, Milvraukee, Sept. 18, 1858. 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 191 

series of inflaences and associations. I have made sucli inquiries 
concerning his condition, appearance, and estimation at this period 
as time permitted. The following extract, from the letter of a lady, 
now residing in New York, gives so lively a picture of the nature 
of the interest he excited, that I will let her tell her own story : — 

" In early childhood my deepest sympathies were excited on his behalf, 
from listening to the rehearsal of anecdotes of him by my beloved mother, 
who knew him personally. When he, with his reputed brother, John, was 
placed under the care of Mr. Ely, my mother was spending some time 
with her brother, a resident of Long Meadows. She soon became inter- 
ested in the lads, especially Eleazar, or Lazau. She found him possessed ol 
fine traits of character, amiable, kind, sensitive, frank, generous, and 
gratefully susceptible to every overture of kindness. She often invited him 
to her brother's house, and found great pleasure in showing him kind 
attentions, and supplying many of his little wants. In the garden was a 
profusion of melons and cjjcumbers, of which he was very fond, and as his 
daily route to and from school led him directly by the house, she invited 
him always to call as he passed, and partake of them freely, and while 
enjoying the repast he would look up to her, with gratitude beaming on his 
countenance, and say, in broken English, 'Good Missy Gomee (Grosvenor), 
give poor Lesau cucummer, Missy Gomee very kind poor Lesau.' At one 
time he came to her, and said, ' Missy Gomee, poor Lesau very sick.' 
She found him pale and very chilly, although it was in midsummer. She 
tried various means to relieve him, and at length, took him into the yard, 
and with a blanket wrapt around him, seated him by the sunny side of the 
house, where he would feel the fuh influence of the sun, and she had soon 
the happiness of seeing him relieved. But it was the strangeness of his 
appearance and circumstances, and the deep mystery which hung around 
him, which excited her deepest pity. His total unlikeness, in his personal 
appearance, as well as character and habits, to his reputed brother, 
forbade, at once, the supposition of one and the same origin. While the 
latter was truly an Indian, with long black hair, his complexion and every 
feature, corresponding with his race, Eleazar had brown hair, hazle eyes, 
light complexion, and European features. The strangeness of these facts 
gave rise to various conjectures and speculations concerning him. 



192 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Although he was naturally cheerful, still, a tinge of thoughtful sadness 
would steal over him when interrogated with regard to his early history ; 
and he would say, he couldn't remember much about it, and it gave hira 
pain, apparently, that he could not. The prevalent opinion, in that 
vicinity, seemed to be that, he was a French boy, who was stolen from his 
family, and brought away at so early an age, as to render his recollections 
of other than Indian life, vague and unsatisfactory. So great was the 
interest felt in his case by my mother, and so great her desire and belief 
that the mystery which enshrouded him would be cleared away, that dur- 
ing her life, so long as was in her power, she kept herself advised of his 
situation and circumstances, and I well remember with what delight she 
heard the announcement, that he had been located at Oneida, twelve miles 
distant from her residence, and would remain with the Indians some time. 
She was then in feeble health, but she remarked, ' as soon as I am able to 
go so far from home, I must go and see Mr. Williams,' which intention, 
however, though she constantly cherished the hope of it, she was never 

able to realize. 

" Very respectfully yours, 

■ " Julia M. Jenkin& 

" New York, February 17th, 1853." 

There must have been something very remarkable in one who 
could attract such attention, and awaken so much curiosity. This 
was not an isolated instance, but the same thing has attended him 
through life. People have been unable to reconcile his look, bear- 
ing, and intelligence with what they were told about him. He 
carried a mystery with him. It enshrouded him. It was felt, but 
could not be explained. In the letter of Mrs. Jenkins, allusion is 
made to his ignorance concerning the events of his childhood, which 
people, it seems, were, even then, anxious to pry into. I receive the 
same information, varied in details, from Mrs. Clarissa Dickenson, 
of New York, who was a schoolfellow of Mr. Williams, and who 
has no acquaintance whatever with Mrs. Jenkins, so that their tes- 
timony stands entirely separate, and affords the highest confirma- 
tion to the truth of tlie facts which they assert in common. 

" He was a fine handsome boy," says Mrs. Dickenson, " sprightly and 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 193 

fair in complexion, and my father frequently told him that, he looked more 
like a Frenchman than an Indian. The scars were always upon liis face, 
from the earliest period of my recollection, and one day, he came in heated 
with exercise, and the perspiration standing on his forehead ; as he 
passed the mirror, his eyes fell upon the scars, and he turned quickly 
round and asked me, if I had ever noticed them, and if I had any idea 
when he got them ? I replied, ' I suppose in childhood,' upon which he 
added, there were painful thoughts connected with them in his mind, 
which he could not bear to dwell on. At this period of his life, though 
usually happy, and frank in his disposition, he was, as the whole family 
remarked, frequently subject to fits of musing and abstraction, as if endea- 
voring to remember something, and when questioned as to the reason of 
it, he said that, there were painful images before his mind of things in 
childhood, which he could not get rid of nor exactly understand. I saw 
an asserted brother of Mr. Williams, who was sent to Long Meadows for 
education. He was entirely unlike Mr. Williams in appearance, being 
quite thin, dark, and like an Indian, whereas Mr. Williams was always 

full and portly in person. . 

" Clarissa W. Dickenson. 
"February 13th, 1853." 

There is another important letter which I will here introduce, 
and which will tell its own tale : — 

" 46, Bank Street, New York, 

" September 7, 1853. 
" Dear Sir : 

" In reply to your inquiries respecting my acquaintance with the Rev. 

Eleazar Williams in early life, I beg to say that I was a schoolmate of 

his at Long Meadow. I am a descendant of the redeemed captive, the 

Rev. John Williams, who was my great-great-grandfather. According to 

the best of my recollection, Eleazar was about fourteen years of age, when 

he came to the care of Mr. Ely. There was no similarity whatever in 

appearance between him and any of his family, either his brother John, or 

his reputed father and mother, who I saw on their visit to Long Meadow. 

Thomas Williams I have seen frequently. Eleazar was a very studious 

boy — indeed, he seemed to do little but study 5 and I can well remember 

9 



194 THE LOST PRINCE. 

his remarkable proficiency in writing, and that the second winter after his 
coming to Long Meadow, he would say to me, ' Come, Cousin Mary, and 
hear my sermon,' when he would produce and read some MS. on religious 
subjects. There was something so remarkable in his character, attain- 
ments, and amiable and religious disposition, that the highest attention 
was shown him by the most distinguished persons, as he was not like 
other children, and was always in the company of gentlemen of literature 

and sobriety. 

" Very truly yours, 

(Appendix J.) " Maky W. Jewett." 

To these documents I must add another from Mrs. Temple, 
daughter of Nathaniel Ely : — 

" Dear Sir 

" The efforts made by my dear departed father, deacon Nathaniel Ely, 
to educate and qualify you for usefulness among your countrymen, as well- 
as to prepare you for glory, honor, and immortality, have given me so 
deep an interest in you, that I should feel pleasure in complying with any 
reasonable request of yours. I, therefore, state in writing, as you 
desired, that there was an entire and striking dissimilarity between your- 
self and your brother John, in the features of your face, your general 
appearance, and also in your predilections and character. 
" Your early and sincere friend, 

"Rev. Eleazar Williams. "Martha E. Temple. 

"January 24, 1851." 

I have already alluded to the practice of Mr. Ely, of keeping a 
regular diurnal record of the principal events of his life ; and as 
this has exercised a very important influence on the character and 
habits of Mr. Williams, I will, before I proceed further, give the 
reader a specimen of it, from the page which records the first 
coming of Eleazar Williams to Long Meadow : — 

"1800. January 21. Monday, Stripping Tobacco, &c. 
" 22. Tuesday, at do., &c., &c. 
" 23. Wednesday, at do., &c., &c., our cousins from 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 



195 



1800. January 24. 

" 25. 
" 26. 
" 27. 



" 28. 

« 29. 

« 30. 

" 31. 
February 1. 

" 2. 

« 3. 



Connawaga came, viz. : Thomas Williams and Ms 

sons, Lezau and John Sir Wattis Williams. 

Thursday, at home, &c. 

Friday, about home. 

Satvirday, Rode to Springfield, &c. 

Lord's Day. Attended Divine Service. Mr. Storrs 

Preached, and Baptized Patty, Daughter to 
Martha Suh, &c. 
Monday, Uode to Somers with Cousin Thomas, 

and Pi-eturned. 
Tuesday, about home. 
Wednesday, Hode to Wolcott Brussels, &c. 
Thursday, attended Samuel Keep's Wedding. 
Friday, Cousin Thomas Set of for Albany. 
Saturday, about home, it Snowed, &c. 
Lord's Day, attended Divine Service, Mr. Storrs 

Preacht and Baptized Chancey, son to Luther 

Cotton." 



And so the good old conscientious man went on, to the day of 
his death ; recording every ride, every storm, telling how at snch a 
time he "did chores," and got his "slay shod," and how "the 
scholls in the streeat met," and how he "visited the scholls in the 
middle deastrict," and how Lord's Day, after Lord's Day " Mr. 
Storrs Preacht." On May 1, 1808, he wrote, "Sacrament day — 
my mind is very tender with the thought that this is the last time 
I shall ever commune with the Church Militant! ! !" Had it been 
possible, he would, doubtless, have recorded how he died, June 13, 
1808, aged fift^'-seven years, and that Mr. Storrs preacht the 
funeral sermon, and said that " both in the male and female line 
his ancestors were distinguished for piety and good sense, for use- 
fulness and-respectability ;" and that "for more than twenty years 
he had sustained the office of a deacon in the church, and so dis- 
charged the appropriate functions of that office, as to purchase to 
himself a good report, and promote the spiritual welfare of his 



196 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Christian brethren." B}^ the convictions of my mind, and the feel- 
ings of my heart, I am a chm-chman ; but there is something in the 
character of the old-fashioned Oongregationalist of New England, 
of which Deacon Ely seems to have been so good a sample, that 
makes me bow my head in reverence and love; and, though we 
worship in different sanctuaries below, may we meet in the temple 
that is above. Under this good man it was that young Williams 
acquired the habit of journalizing which has been continued, with 
occasional breaks, throughout life. But, with the intuitive good 
sense of a highly superior mind, he improved upon his model. The 
earliest journal of Mr. Williams in my possession was written, as 
handwriting and internal evidence show, as early as the year 1803, 
but it dates back to January, 1800 ; and the portion which relates 
to that and the following year Avere then composed from recollec- 
tion and previous memoranda. Like Mr. Ely's, it is written on 
sheets of paper sewn together, but instead of giving the events of 
every day it only records the most important circumstances, such 
as visits from his supposed father, journeys, changes of residence, 
&c. It begins thus : — 

" MEBIORANDUM FOR THE YEAR 1800. 

" Oil Journey of Life^ 1800. 

" I have written firom time to time, and now collected in part by recol- 
lection : First, my coming to England in the year 1800. I, Eleazer Wil- 
liams, aged 13 years, and John Williams, my brother, both of us came to 
Long Meadow, it being Wednesday, 23d of January, 1800, this being the 
day we began with Nathaniel Ely. After a long tedious journey we 
arrived at this place safely, through the kindness of Providence — praised 
be God for our preservation. We was receive wilcome to our friends here 
and treated kindly by them. My brother and I was not able to converse 
with them, and went to school next day after our arrival. Mr. Ely, Mr. 
Cotton, and my father went with us to school house. Mrs. Hale kept the 
school, and we was treated kindly by her. I hope I shall remember her 
amiable disposition. Mr. Ely and my father went to [illegible] and from 
thence, Mr. R. and my father went to Hartford, and returned with him to 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 197 

Long Meadow, and brought us little books, a present fromHev. Dr. Strong, 
of Hartford. We receive them very thankfully. 

" Long Meadow^ Feb. 11, 1800. — Friday. — My father set out for home 
with Mr. Fitch and his wife, by way of Albany. The occasion, his going 
that way that the counsel [i. e. Indian Council] was then sitting in that 
city, and he was the member. Mrs. Fitch is cousin to my father, Mr. 
Williams' daughter, of this town. We heard from them in course few 
days. The first da they went from here, they went as far as Chester, to 
Ptev. Mr. Bascom, and kept Sabbath with him, 30 miles from here, and 
Mrs. Bascom is cousin to my father. 

" We heard no more from our father until he came down again to see us 
next October. It was great trial to me when he left us. more so on 
account that we could not speak the language. However, w^e soon learn 
the languag — so as to be able to converse, and the family were very 
agreeable and kind to us. The blessing of the Lord rest upon them. 

" October Sj 1800. Thanks be to God for his loving kindness tovf ards us. 
We have been very well since our father left us, and came to see us this 
month, and we have reason to bless God that all our friends at north, were 
well. Went down to Hartford with him, and Mr. Ely went with us. 
We went to Mr. Pitkin, and dined there, from thence went over the river 
to Eev. Dr. Strong, and lodge there one night. And give us many little 
books, story books. Friday, my father and I set out for Tolland. Mr. 
Ely and John return to Long Meadow. We arrived, toward night, at Hey. 
Dr. Williams, we was received kindly by the Gov. and the family, and 
this being the first time I am in this place, we set out next morning and 
dine atPtev. Dr. Backer's — Sommers — from thence we start for Long Mea- 
dow, ^.nd arrived about sundown, this being Saturday, and my father set 
out for home this week, and my brother was very anxious to go home with 
him — ^but it v/as soon over — his home sickness — hoping the Lord will be 
with my father on his journey, and return him safely to his friends. If I 
only consider the blessings I have received from my common father which 
is in Heaven, oh, how ought I to give him praise which is due to him. I_ 
could exclaim in the language of the good Jacob, " I am not worthy the 
least of all thy mercies." Oh, my soul, forget not all the benefits which 
thou hast received from thy father of all mercies. Praise him. Prais^ 
him, oh my soul. This being written by the recollection. The end 1800. 



198 THE LOST PRINCE. 

The only entry which is made for the year 1801, is the fol- 
lowing : — 

" Memorandicm^ year 1801. 
'■'■ Ja7iy. 1, 1801. — The God of all Hiercies preserved us and brought us 
to see another of New Year's day. Let every created being give him 
thanks and praise. Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness 
and his wonderful works towards the children of men ! 

" Meditation on the. Anniversary of the New Yearns Day. 
"0 Lord, thou art the great preserver of men. I give my humble 
hearty thanks for my preservation and protection the year past. Thou 
hast been so kind and merciful as to bring me to see another New Year's 
Day. Ohj may I serve thee this year more faithful than I have done 
hitherto. Assist me, most gracious God, to devote myself wholly to thy 
service and glory — preserve me from sinning against thee, and I pray thee 
forgive me all the sins which I am guilt of, and prepare me for thy whole 
providential dealings with me, whether life or death — and I beseech thee to 
bless my friends wherever they may be ; may thy name be known on earth 
— may all flesh see thy salvation. I ask thee in the name of Jesus Christ, 
thy beloved Son. Be all honor and praise be given to the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Spirit, now and ever more. Amen." 

Now, these entries in his journal seem to have been written 
somewhere about 1802 or '3, but they are copies in part of previous 
MSS., aad partly composed from recollection. At first, he scrib- 
bled his thoughts on little scraps of paper, some specimens of 
which, in the year 1805, remain; and then, afterwards transferred 
them to larger sheets, and wrote with greater care. The journal 
itself bears every mark of great age, and there is a providential 
test of its accuracy and authenticity in the journal of Mr. Ely. 
There is an invariable correspondence in the entries in the two doc- 
uments, a specimen of which it may be well in this place to 
exhibit. Whenever young Eleazer writes down, in fall, with all 
attendant circumstances, any event, to him remarkable, such as the 
arrival or departure of his father, you find it briefly noted, in a 
line, in the diary of the deacon. 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 



199 



This agreement is best shown in parallel columns. 

N. Ely. 



E. Williams. 
" Long Meadow^ Dec. 9, 1802.-^ 
God is once more pleased to send 
our father. He came to-day about 
sun down, and brought us news 
that my sister is sick. God be 
praised. 

'■^Long Meadoto, April 2, 1803. 
— God is merciful towards his chil- 
dren — he does everything that is 
right and for their good. Let the 
whole earth give him praise for his 
loving-kindness towards them. 
This day I receive a letter from my 
father, as follows : — 

" ' Dear son, I take this oppor- 
tunity to let you know of our wel- 
fare. I arrived here in ten days 
after I left you, and found two of 
my children very sick, and now I 
am to inform you that they are 
taken fi-om me by immortality, &c. 

'' ' Since that time we have lost 
one of your brothers, six years 
old,' &c. 

"Zrowg- Meadow^ April, 1803. — 
I am going to live with Mr. Brock- 
way, Ellington." 



"1802. 

^^ Dec. 9, Thursday at home, ^c, 
4-c. — Thomas "Williams, of Con- 
nawaga,' came to our house. 



" 1803, 

^'- April 2, Saturday. — Met at 
Lieut. Hezekiah Hale's on select 
mens business, heard of the death 
of three of Thomas Williams's 
children, of Connawaga, viz. 2 
daughters and one son. 



N.B. This was written by an in- 
terpreter, Thos. Williams being un- 
acquainted tvith English 



"April 30, Saturday. — Rode in 
chaise with Lazau to Elington, left 
him with Mr. Brockway, &c., &c., 
&c., and returned." 



There can thus be no doubt, and if there were, personal inspection 
of the documents would at once remove it, of the entire authenticity 
of the remarkable and most interesting record of Mr. Wiliams's early- 
life contained in his journal, But w^hat a strange problem it pre- 



200 THE LOST PRINCE. 

sents by itself. A child, taken from the midst of savage life, is with- 
in a year or two master of the English language so as to write it 
with a fluency, ease, and precision of expression — notwithstanding 
marks of simplicity which create a smile — usually attained only 
after long and painful study, by those born to the use of it. His ob- 
servations and reflections are all just, he exhibits a mind previously 
disciplined in the ways and feelings of civilization, his conscience is 
cultivated, his religious sentiments are those of a mature intellect, 
and, in a word, in a very short space he has made a progress in learn- 
ing and morals almost miraculous. If I had stated all this without 
having the documentary evidence to produce to the world, and the 
ability to annihilate scepticism by fact, with what incredulity 
should I have been met. A distinguished gentleman has expressed 
doubts as to Mr. Williams having ever kept a journal — because he 
could see no use for it. "Why, the school-boy, fresh from the wilder- 
ness, found the utility of preserving a record of his thoughts, feel- 
ings, religious convictions, domestic sorrows and joys; and, as if with 
an instinct, unaccountable except as the inspiration of Providence, 
that all these random effusions might some day be of interest, has 
treasured them, amid all the vicissitudes of an adventurous and 
checquered life, and now produces, when forced by circumstances 
and in self-defence to do so, to the gaze of the world, the words 
penned with no idea that ^ny eye but his own and God's would 
read them. 

Now these papers show that from the very outset, civilized life 
was natural to him. There is every token that education came to 
him as a recovery. There is none of the impatience of the half- 
savage Indian accustomed only to the wigwam and the hunting 
ground, and unable to endure the thraldom of civilization, but every 
token that he felt himself at home among books, and in the use of 
the pen, and in religious meditation, so as actually to outstrip, within 
a short period of his residence in Kcav England, the good DGacon 
who had been the Providential instrument of withdrawing liim 
from the barbarism in which ho had been engulfed, and Avould 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. £01 

soon have been everlastingly and indistinguishably buried. The 
moment that he is placed in civilized socieij, his mind expands 
upon it, and grasps the Avhole. Though marky clouds of oblivion 
roll between him and a past life, emitting, through their gluom, but 
faint, intangible, and mystic rays, which only bewilder and perplex 
him, the discipline of that life, both to the mind and conscience, 
remains in its effects. It is in its psychological aspect that Mr. 
Williams's case has, from the first, next to sympathy with his mis- 
fortunes, interested me, and the perusal of his early journals deep- 
ens the interest excited by his most singular mental condition. I 
feel certain that the best intellects will have their attention riveted 
to this point, as to a problem worthy of profound study, and exhi- 
biting a new phase in the laws of mental action, only capable of 
development under circumstances the most exceptional and extra- 
ordinary. 

In the beginning of the year 1802, there was a great revival, 
as it is called, among Congregationalists and others, of religion, 
in Long Meadow. The principal trace of it in Mr. Ely's diary 
is the record that other ministers were then preaching in Mr. 
Storr's faithfully occupied pulpit, and the texts, " Sirs, what must 
we do to be saved?" and "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ 
he is none of his," show the nature of the exhortations then em- 
ployed. In addition to which, under date of 5tli and 6th March, 
the following entries occur : — 

" 1802. 5th March, Friday. — At home. Conference Preparations at our 
house; Mr. Harris present, Lazeau WilUams much affected, &c., &c. 

'• Qth March., Saturday. — About home. The minds of the children 
affected, &c., &c., the Spirit of the Lord is at work," &c. 

But, all which the good deacon, who was the very soul of 
brevity, indicated by &c., may" be found at large in Eleazar Williams's 
journal, " Wonderfnl works in the month of February. God was 
pleased to pour out his Holy Spirit in the hearts of the people in this 

9* 



202 THE LOST PRINCE. 

place, many are inquiring the way that leads to eternal life or 
the holy city of God. It is wonderful the great revival of religion 
in this place ; O Lord, be pleased to show us our unhappy state, 
and make us inquire what we should do to he saved from thy 
wrath." It was, according to Mr. Ely's journal, on the 21st of this 
month, that Mr. Enos Bliss preached from this text, and the inci- 
dental coincidence is curious and important. " Say to our heart," 
continues the journal, " tremble ye not — ^believe in and look to thy 
Creator, and Jesus Christ thy Saviour, and the Holy Spirit thy 
Sanctifier, and keep my commandments, and thou sbalt be saved. 

'''•Long Meadow^ Feb. 28, 1802. — Many of the young people now 
begin to speak with freedom to one another, concerning the inte- 
rest of Christ's kingdom. In the evening conference, meeting was 
attended by a large number of people, both old and young." In 
Deacon Ely's journal this conference meeting is also spoken of. 

But, I may here avail myself of his convenient, &o., and spare 
my eyes the pain of deciphering from the faded MS. whole pages, 
which follow, of Eleazar's revival enthusiasm. I do not believe it 
was in this school he first acquired his religious feelings ; but that 
the devotional tendency of his mind was from a pre-existent life. 
His piety, however, was here fanned into a flame, and has, through 
all vicissitudes, burned steadily and uniformly. The death of his 
reputed relatives, in 1803, seems strongly to have affected his mind, 
and gave rise, in his journals, to long reflections on the uncertainty 
of life, and prayers to God that he might be prepared for his own 
departure. He went in April, 1803, to reside at Ellington, and 
remained there until July 20, when Mr. Ely brought him back to 
Long Meadow. 

This gentleman, as was generally understood, had undertaken the 
education of the two boys at his own expense ; but his means being 
very moderate, he soon found the necessity of applying to others 
for assistance. His first application was made to the Massachu- 
setts Missionary Society, who granted him fifty dollars ; and in 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 203 

November, 1802, he applied also to the Hampshire Missionary 
Society, who made him a similar donation, upon a report from a 
committee consisting of Joseph Lathrop, D.D., Rev. Richard Storrs, 
and Justin Ely, Esq. In their report, these gentlemen state the 
ages of the children to be, at that time, fifteen and ten years of 
age; although in an account of expenditures by Mr. Ely, to whicli 
their signatures are attached, it is said that Eleazar was nineteen, 
and John twelve years of age in January, 1800. They are repre- 
sented as having made "remarkably good proficiency in school 
learning, to exhibit strong proofs of virtuous and pious dispositions, 
and seem likely to make useful missionaries among the heathen." 
This praise, though thus bestowed indiscriminately on the two 
lads, was only, in its full extent, deserved by the eldest ; for, in the 
course of a few years, it was found impossible to cultivate the mind 
of John, whose passion for savage life was irrepressible, though in 
many respects a fine young man. He could not be broken into the 
trammels of civilization, and returned home to live and die a mere 
Indian. Dr. Jenkins, of New York, informs me that years ago, he 
heard an aged gentleman, now dead, speak of the singular impres- 
sion made on his mind by the contrast in the conduct of the boys, 
as well as their appearance, when he took them out one day for a 
walk in the fields. John would not come near him, but played 
about in a shy, wild, manner; while Eleazar kept close by his 
side, and asked him questions on all subjects, politics, religion, his- 
tory, and geography. 

"Whatever solitary distress the school-boy experienced, in the dim 
and shadowy reminiscences of horrors whose intangible features 
escaped him whenever he attempted to grasp them and give them 
form, time, name and locality, he was now in the midst of scenes 
and influences which left their own impress on his character and 
mind, and claimed the prominent share of his attention. He was 
in Massacliusetts, among enthusiastic religionists, as the embodiment 
of theDeerfield tragedy, and all the treasured traditions of a century 
of prayer meetings, mournful tmd stern recoUectiong of invasion, 



204 THE LOST PRINCE. 

fire; and blood, hostility to Romanism, veneration for the memory 
of John Williams, and piqued affection for the poor Eunice^ whose 
perversion was looked upon rather as a misfortune than a crime, all 
centred in him, so that he found himself a hero from the alphabet, 
a predestined crusader and missionary of Protestantism, and became 
tinctured with all the feelings in the social atmosphere around him. 
Naturally of an ambitious tnirn of mind, he had an idea, as I am in- 
formed by a schoolmate, that he was superior to every one, and 
when questioned as to the reason for this feeling, which he took no 
care to conceal, would impute it to his Indian blood. His friends, 
on the other hand, were captivated by his frankness, grace, and in- 
telligence, and felt proud of a kinsman, who issued from the bosom 
of barbarism, with such susceptibilities for refinement and culture. 
All this has been remembered and treasured up, apart from the inte- 
rest recently excited, as something most remarkable. He exhibited 
a grace and polish of manner, unusual in a New England village, at 
that period, and seemed rather to give than to receive the polished 
manners of social life. He was called familiarly "the plausible 
boy." 

The Williams family felt justly proud of him, and clung pertina- 
ciously then, as some of them do now, against all external evidence, 
to the idea that he was a descendant of Eunice, and were in the 
habit of carrying him round the country to exhibit to different 
branches of the wide extended stock, as one by whom an honor was 
conferred upon them. 

The strength of this feeling is shown, in a somewhat eccentric 
and ludicrous manner, in the following extract from a letter written 
by the Eev. Thomas Williams, of Providence, R. I. and published 
in the papers at the beginning of the year : — 

"We thought ourselves to be highly honored by such a kinsman as Ele- 
azar Williams, on account of his conversion from Popery, his native genius, 
his firm health, his manly form, his pleasant countenance, his cheerful and 
peculiar conversation, and the happy union of Indian shrewdness with 
our Waiak &Bd<«r. I took him with ms from Hartford to my father's 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 205 

in Pomfret ; from Pomfret to Dr. Emmons in Pranklin, whose wife 
was Martha Williams, whose father and my father were first cousins. 
From Franklin I went with cousin Eleazar to Boston. Since those da.ys I 
have frequently had information respecting the Pi.ev. Mr. Williams. But 
if I had ever had the least reason to believe that he was not our beloved 
and honored cousin, as descended legitimately from Eunice Williams, 
and only a son of Louis XVI. of Prance, I never should have rejoiced and 
gloried in him as one of our family." 

Eleazar, on his part, repayed the affection of the Williams 
family with gratitude and love ; and although there was ever an 
obscurity in liis mind, concerning his origin, yet being unable to 
lift the veil of mystery from the past, he fell passively into the 
state of things in which he found himself, and took as much pride 
and pleasure in considering himself the descendant of Eunice, as 
her relatives took in calling him so. Adopted, to apparent identi- 
fication, by the family, he identified his feelings and interests with 
theirs, adopted their traditions, their sentiments, their principles, 
and has continued, up to the present time, to entertain for them 
all the love which springs from the most cherished and honored 
ties of relationship. His situation was most peculiar. Against the 
tangible and evident claims made on him by his reputed kinsmen, 
the every day realities of life, and all the endearing associations 
which spring from the reception of a thousand marks of kindness, 
social and pecuniar}^, he had nothing to oppose but thick clouds 
and darkness brooding over his early childhood, faintly lighted up 
by mysterious dreams of unknown things, to which he could 
assign neither date nor place. 

If, in long after years, when the events of* his life had become 
inextricably confused and complicated, w^e find him the sport of 
contending feelings, and the prey of a corroding anxiety which did 
not perniit him to rest, and showed no avenue of escape, leading tr 
apparent inconsistencies of conduct in perfect harmony with the 
incongruities and anomalies of his lot, we should rather pity him 
for the goal cruoifixion, entailed by his position, than harshly and 



206 THE LOST PRINCE. 

superficially judge him to be a deceiver, because he still continued, 
nominally, to identify himself with hia adopted kinsmen, at a time 
when grave and well-founded doubts as to the truth of his 
personality were torturing his spirit. An unjust and unjustifiable 
attempt has recently been made to injure him in public estimation, 
simply because, within a few years, he has, within the circle of his 
nominal kindred, spoken of himself as a member of the Williams 
family. This is not the place to enter into the question, which 
belongs historically to a later period, and I only allude to it, in 
passing, because suggested by the circumstances of his boyish days, 
and the associations in the midst of which he was reared. 

On the 15th January, 1804, Thomas and Mary Ann Williams 
visited Long Meadow. Their coming, at that time, recorded in the 
journals, is well remembered by Mrs. Jewet, a descendant of the 
Eedeemed Captive, who was at school with Eleazar, and who, 
though a child, was struck with the incongruity in appearance 
between him and all his reputed relations. After staying a few 
days, and visiting with the boys in various places, all of which is 
duly recorded, Mr. and Mrs. Williams returned. "Oh, it was 
grevious to my heart," says Eleazar, "I hope God will be with 
them." 

In May, being quite unwell, and suffering from pain in the head, 
he was taken to Boston for change of scene and recreation. He 
now attended various missionary meetings, and says, concerning one, 
" Here I saw the largest assembly that ever I have seen before." 
Alas, poor boy, thou hadst probably witnessed vaster and wilder 
gatherings. Previous to their return home, Mr. Ely made applica- 
tion to the House of Eepresentatives of Massachusetts, for aid in 
supporting and educating the lads, acknowledging the assistance he 
had received from the missionary societies, and saying that a 
reverse in his circumstances had put it out of his power to fulfil 
his original design of educating them at his own charge. ' Together 
with his petition he presented a specimen of Eleazar's writing, in 
large and small hand, which Mr. Williams has preserved among his 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 207 

papers, and which is now before me. A resolution passed by the 
Senate, 13th June, 1804, that three hundred and fifty dollars should 
be paid for this purpose, was concurred in by the House of Repre- 
sentatives, June 15th. Shortly after, Mr. Ely set forth an account 
of his expenditures with the quaint heading " The Humane, the 
Noble, and the Charitable of every name to Nathaniel Ely, of Long 
Meadow, Massachusetts, Dr. To expenditures for the education of 
Lazau Williams and John Surwattes Williams," but with what suc- 
cess this appeal was attended there is no means of ascertaining. 
From a letter written by a Mr. David Avery, it appears that in 
some minds there was a violent prejudice against them, because 
they had been " soaked with the blood of their relatives slain by the 
Indians from Canada." But this feeling must have been quite 
exceptional. 

Erom October, ''.804, to May, 1805, the journals are missing. By 
the latter date, he had obtained great precision and considerable 
elegance of style : — • 

" 1805. 15th May. — To-day I am to set out with Mr. ii^ly on a journey 
for my health. 

" 15fA, Coventry. — Came from Long Meadow this morning ; I am much 
better. 

" 26f^, Coventry. — Lord's Day, evening. I am more unwell to-day. 
Dr. Hunt is very kind to me. I went to meeting part of the day ; Mr. 
Brockway preached from Genesis iv, 16, and Proverbs iii, 20. 

" Tlth, Thompson. — Monday, from Coventry to-day. We called upon Mr. 
Welch, of Mansfield, and found him not at home ; and from thence went 
to Ashford, and dined there. 

" 28fA, Roxhury^ Evening. — Erom Thompson to-day ; I am more unwell. 
Exceeding pain in my breast. Mr. Ely is very attentive and kind to me. 

" 29 ^A, Boston. — We rode six miles this morning, and took breakfast 
here. After breakfast, rode out in a coach with several gentlemen — went 
to the court-house, and from thence to the meeting-house. I was intro- 
duced to several clergymen, and also to young gentlemen. I was invited 
to dine at Mr. T's., Boston. I went out to Puoxbury last evening, and 
wtnwied this morning. I dined at Mr. D's. 5 and thig afternoon I went 



208 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Dver to Charlestown, agreeably to the request of the Itev. Dr. Morse, 
and took tea with him. I was agreeably entertained while I stayed, 
looking over his books. I am somewhat better to-day. How thankful I 
ought to feel to the Divine Providence that I am no worse than I am. 
Praise ye the Lord, 0, my soul. Since I have been in town, I have 
been invited into company of some of the most respectable families. I 
ought to be very humble, that so much notice is taken of me. I haVe 
visited all the ministers as I was invited, and they treated me with utmost 
respect, and gave me good advice. 

'■•31st, Bosto7i. — Rode out to-day to Cambridge to seethe college, and 
took tea at Mr. Ps'. I am better, I trust the journey will do me good. 
Let me always remember that I am in the hands of God, and trust him 
at all times." 

After visiting Roxbury and Providence tbey went to Newport, 
and here attended the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the Bap- 
tist meeting. The sermon, preached at the latter is thus recorded : 

" Mr. Emerson preached from Eccle. xi. 9, The preacher pointed out 
in the latter part of his discourse, that the thoughts of men, their actions 
and conduct, God will bring to light in the day of judgment. He admo- 
nished all to live in such a manner as that they may give a good account 
of their conduct in that day, when God shall bring every secret thing to 
light." 

A few days after, occurs the following entry : — 

" I had a bad turn to-day, bleeding at my breast, which I feel at this 
very moment. I am in the hands of a wise and holy God. Oh, must I 
die in my younger days ? 0, my God, cut me not off in the days of my 
youth, but spare me a little longer that I may do a little to thy honor and 
glory. It is a solemn thing to die." 

But, travelling about in. various places, bis spirits soon revived; 
and in a day or two be writes : — 

"I am much pleased with Mr. Smith; and my friend Storrs is very 
attentive to his lovely daughter. This place (Montauk) is most delightful, 
(Old I am entertained very agreeably, indeed." 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 209 

Again : — 

" There are several ladies going with us to-n.orrow to New London. 
The ladies requested me to sing French tunes.'''' 

The italics are my own. They went out on a sailing excursion, 
and had a pleasant time; but the ladies were sea-sick, and called 
on hhn for help though he was very feeble. "The ladies were 
very thankful for my attention to them." 

The journey was concluded on the 22d June, when he writes : — 

" I have seen a great many things since we have been gone. How 
thankful I ought to be to Mr. Ely for his kind attention to me. Surely 
this is a very substantial evidence of his Mendship." 

But although he had derived much pleasure and temporary 
benefit from this ramble, his health still continued in a very feeble 
state, and the light of life seemed flickering in its socket. The phy- 
sician advised him to try a journey to the bracing air of the north, 
and though this was much opposed by his. friends, it was finally 
determined he should go. Before setting out, he "thought much 
about his eternal state," and prayed that God would make him 
wise in the things which belonged to his everlasting peace." 
Passing through Cambridge, Greenwich, Salem, and Albany, he 
came to Lake Champlain, with the scenery of which he expresses 
great delight: — " Lake Champlain is rolling under me. Here it is 
fifteen or twenty miles wide, lined with mountains on both sides 
of the shores, whose summits seem to touch the clouds. I thought 
much upon the works of creation. I said to myself. Great and 
marvellous are thy works. Lord God Almighty." Arriving at 
Montreal, he thus describes that city. "Montreal is pleasantly 
situated on the north side of the river St. Lawrence, the streets are 
wide and well paved, the houses generally built of stone, from two 
to three stories high. I w^ent to the market this morning about 
e;unrise. I found it quite full. The market itself is a curiosity." 

There must have been something about him at this period of hfe 
remarkably attractive and captivating, for, it is easy to perceive. 



210 THE LOST PRINCE. 

from the following brief and modest entries in his journal, that his 
presence in Montreal occasioned a general sensation in the highest 
circles, and called forth attentions not usually paid except to the 
most distinguished persons, and which in the case of one by reputa- 
tion an Indian youth, could not possibly have been drawn out had 
there not been a personal fascination and superiority which cast iu 
the shade all other considerations. 

Thomas Wilhams, alias Tehorakwaneken, his reputed father, was 
•a wandering Indian hunter, and Mary Ann Konwatewenteta, liis 
reputed mother, a squaw in a blanket, not very distinguished per- 
sonages in the eyes of the dignitaries and literati of Canada — but 
all this in his presence was forgotten as absolutely inexistant. 

" 1st October, St. Lotcis. — The Hon. Sir. J. JarvLs, secretary of .state, came 
to see me this afternoon, and I had a very agreeable interview with him. 

" 3d October. — I rode out to-day to Chautagay, I spent my time very agree- 
ably with several young French gentlemen and ladies — they were very 
polite indeed. 

'■•4th October. — To-day, I visited Mr. Lorimier, the British agent of the 
Indian department. 

^•5th October. — To-day, I visited and dined with the Hev. Mr. Van 
Felson, Homan Catholic clergyman in this town. He t.-eated jne politely. 

" 12th October. — To-day, I had the honor to be admitted as a onember of 
the Historical Society. 

'■'■1st Nov. — I have been to the Roman Catholic church to-day, the 
annual festival of the dead. 

" 2d November. — I have been to La Prairie to-day, and I attended the 
Mass. Pi,ev. Mr. Boucher preached, a Ptoman Catholic clergyman. 1 
think he is the most eloquent orator I ever heard in my life, and has the 
most graceful gestures. After meeting I went to Mr. Perault's, and 
dined there — and there I saw Mr. Thomas — to be remembered, &c., &c., 
&c. Yesterday several men came to see me, &c., &c. 

'■' If I am honest I will speak the truth. 

'' 25t]i December, St, Louis, — ^The commemoration of the birth of our 
blessed Lord. — I have just returned from church. The altar was dressed 
very fine. There were about 20 levites attended upon the High Priest." 




/ 



/ ' 



; I 



I ;/ > 



\ 



E LEAZ AP. WILLIAMS . 
?'a€.-siuiilu of R'.nciZ Skp.tclz,by F'oL0iiouLi,J-)'oiii CriOjiiLal Fortro(ii,'l>y J- Ste.warL- oi Harttora vilSOo, 
Q.P PUTNAM & C ■; N. ■•- - 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 211 

No evidence, which it is possible to collect, at this distance of 
time, from others, can equal in life-like and vivid portraiture, the art- 
less representation of himself vi^hich the poor youth here gives. I do 
not wish to anticipate, but in the strange commixture of argument 
and history I am writing, I wish to remind the reader that he has 
before him the Indian boy, who, according to a certain forged 
affidavit, was nine years of age in 1800, and who, on his return to 
Canada, was laid up at Oaughnawaga with ulcers on his knees. 
Notwithstanding all this, he was certainly sufficiently active, had 
attained a surprising maturity of mind, and exhibited an acute per- 
ception of men and things, which would have done credit even to 
the best instructed lads. 

No wonder he was looked upon in New England as a prodigy, 
and his cousin, Thomas, felt proud of his kinsman. He writes in 
the style of a young gentleman of finished education, on his travels 
—demeans himself with well-bred courtesy and affability — attracts 
the attention of distinguished foreigners, mingles with easy grace 
In the society of ladies, and is the hero of their girlish festivity — 
Out, stranger than all, has the honors of a savan conferred upon 
him, and is elected member of a historical society. A happy com- 
pound, indeed, of "Indian shrewdness and "Welch ardor." 
Providentially, a painting of him, at this period of life, has been 
preserved. It is the rude daubing of some New England genius, 
left to invent for liimself an art, in which he had no models to 
guide him. The hair is a blotch, but the countenance is fair, with 
un expression of great sweetness and innocence, combined with 
thoughtful and almost Quaker gravity. It is one of those faces 
which indicate a nature to which integrity, honor, gentleness, and 
love, are almost a necessity, and where the seeds of divine grace 
fall upon a soil naturally prepared to receive- them. Of all words 
in the world, shrewdness, is the most inapplicable to such a being. 
There is not the remotest sign of cunning on that countenance, but 
a bland sincerity which thinks and wishes nothing but good for all 
that breathes. It strongly resembles, allowing for the necessary 



212 THE LOST PRINCE. 

advance of age, the pictures of the Dauphin, and exhibits in the 
most marked manner the lineaments of the Bourbons. It is 
scarcely possible, but that the Romish priests and dignitaries with 
whom he was, at this period of life, so frequently in company, if 
they had the remotest intimation that the young Prince was among 
the Indians, must have detected the truth ; and his journal exhibits 
traces of a mysterious character impressed upon his first inter- 
course with them. 

The beginning of 1806 found him still in Canada, and the 
journal of that year opens, as usual, with religious meditation. 

'• Oh; I wish I may live this year to the honor and glory of God. A.s 1 
live may I live in the flesh by the faith of the Son of God ; a faith which 
purifieth the heart, vvorketh by love, and produceth obedience. May I be 
humbled under a sense of my past vileness, and labor after that purity of 
heart and holiness of life without which no man can see and enjoy God. 
May I ever realize that here I have no continuing city and the vast 
importance of religion to render me viseful and comfortable v/hile I li\-e and 
happy when I die." 

He left Canada on the 23d January ; but to the last was in the 
society of the British consul, surrounded by French ladies, and 
receiving calls from gentlemen of Montreal. He took under his 
charge in going to New England a boy named Rice, in order to 
put him to school. All this w^as five years from the time when 
he emerged from barbaric life. 

There is nothing deserving notice in his journal for some time, 
though crowded with the details of daily life, attendance on mis- 
sionary meetings, associations, and so forth. He was at this period 
studying under Dr. Welch, at Mansfield. In May, 1806, he accom- 
panied a reputed relative, the Rev, Mr. Williams, to Boston, and 
was examined respecting his studies by several ministers. Mr. Ely, 
who was at that period in the legislature, joined them. It w^as at 
this time that the interview occurred between him and the Rev. 
Mr. — afterwards bishop — Ohevreux. The only trace to be found of 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 213 

it upon the journal, whicli is here •very brief and fragmentary, is 
thefollowiug entry : — 

" Boston^ Sattcrday^ June 3. — This week 1 have been to several lectures. 

^'Lord^s JDay^ 4. Blessed be God for another of his holy days. To-day, 
went in forenoon to Uoraan Church, and this afternoon over to Charlestown, 
with Dr. Morse. June 5. I have been to the Roman Church to-day with 
Mr. Ely. 

" Boston^ 15th, Lord'' s Day. — I have been here some time, but I have 
not kept particular account since I have been, and I have seen a great deal 
of v/ickedness." 

It is unfortunate that he did not record the conversation with 
Chevreux, as he did so many things of less importance ; but we 
cannot foresee what is to have a bearing on the future. The inter- 
view was brought about by an Irish Roman Catholic gentleman ; 
and the ostensible cause of the somewhat mysterious visit of Ely, 
a rigid Puritan, to a Romish place of worship, was his passion for 
music. He was introduced, to Chevreux, as an Indian youth, stu- 
dying for the ministry — and the priest immediately questioned him 
as to the practice of the Indians in adopting French children, and 
also whether he had ever heard of a boy being brought from 
France, and left among them. Chevreux could not fail to perceive 
that he was of French extraction, and, probably, from his marked 
lineaments, at once divined the secret, or may have known it be- 
fore ; and asked the question to ascertain whether he had himself 
any knowledge or suspicion on the subject. 

I pass over pages crowded with religious reflections, prayers, con- 
fessions of sin, reports of sermons, ordinations, conferences, visits, 
journeys, and similar things incident to his character and posi- 
tion, till on the 14th May, 1807, we find him at Hartford, Massa- 
chusetts : — 

" Here I was introduced to President D wight. The good president took 
me on one side, and said that, he had been wanting to see me this long 
time, and had pleasure to see me now. He gave me very affecting advice. 
' If you are to have happiness in this world,' he said, ' you must have reli- 



214 THE LOST PRINCE. 

gion. The happiness of the world consists in religion only ; and from no 
other source can we hope to attain felicity, in another world.' Hcfihus 
conversed with me an hour ; at last, he took my hand and left me, saying, 
' It is my most earnest prayer to Almighty God, that he will raise you up 
to be useful in the world, in the day of your generation. The blessing qf 
the Lord be with you always.' I had the pleasure to see many othei 
ministers, and their advice to me was too much. It overcame my mind, 
so that I was obliged to retire to my lodgings until meeting time, when 
my friend S. came to me and said, ' The president gave you good advice. 
I would give anything to be regarded and noticed by so many venerable 
men in New England.' I answered, ' This is my grief 5 I don't deserve 
any notice to be taken of me.' " 

President Dwight, in his travels in Kew England and New 
York, alludes to this interview in a manner which claims attention 
in this place, as an additional confirmation of the difficulty Avhich 
all observant persons had in reconciling the personal appearance of 
the youth with his imputed Indian parentage. After recounting 
the history of Eunice Williams, he continues : — 

" One of her grandchildren" — [he should have placed the i-elationship a 
remove farther] — " has been educated at Long Meadow, in a respectable 
manner. I have seen this young man — ^he has a very good countenance, 
pleasing manners, a good understanding, and apparently an excellent dis- 
position, with scarcely a trace of the Indian character. He is destined to 
the employ of a missionary."* 

Until historical research and scientific examination proved the 
contrary, there was necessarily an acquiescence, not, however, 
without protest, in his extraction, as represented by his New 
England relatives, but accompanied with curiosity, affectionate 
interest, and a feeling that there was something behind which 
required explanation. 

On 27th May, 1807, an entry occurs which shows the soundness 
of his mind, rising, by the force of its own constitution, above the 

* Dwight's Travels, vol. ii. p. 69. 



ADOPTION an:d education. 215 

narrowness of the theological system, in the midst of which circum- 
stances placed him : — 

"Dr. Williams and I had an agreea,ble conversation upon different sub- 
jects, ajid we disagree in some particular points of Christian doctrine — 
such as total moral depravity, election, redemption through Christ, effec- 
tual calling, adoption, justification through the righteousness of Christ, 
and the saints' perseverance. The Protestant divines, hi my opinion, go 
too far in some particular points. I wish the doctrine of the great Captain 
of salvation could be preached in its purity." 

As all the mental phenomena exhibited by Mr. Wliliams, in 
early life, are deserving of close and attentive study, since they 
must either confirm or militate with the theory of his origin here 
maintained, I would call the attention of the reader to the action of 
his mind upon religious subjects. Taken at the age of fourteen or fif- 
teen from the bosom of Indian barbarism, and a religious atmosphere, 
impregnated with the most ignorant superstitions and slavish sub- 
serviency to Eome, in which, had he lived all his life in the enjoy- 
ment of his senses, he must by that time have become, like Eunice 
Williams, who did not go among the Indians and Jesuits until 
she was seven years of age, a bigoted devotee to the system. But 
he comes to Kew England in the strange condition of a youth with 
his mental faculties in the fullest and most vigorous activity, as if 
they had previously been matured, by almost excessive culture, and 
yet absolutely without any prepossession whatever, either for In- 
dian life or Romish superstition, and cleaving to the past by no 
links but those of the social affections. He falls at once, into the 
kindly moral spirit of New Englandism, and twines his heart-strings 
around its altars; but his intellect acts independently, and refuses 
to adopt the peculiar theological tenets of those whom he loves and 
honors. The phenomenon here exhibited, is that of a mind with 
its powers cultivated, and yet destitute of prepossession in favor 
of any particular system. Whence could he obtain his early matu- 
rity of judgment? and how are we to account for the absence of 
any leaning towards Romanism ? 



216 THE LOST PRINCE. 

The journals afford so many indications of the nature of the man, 
that the reader will not blame me for presenting him as I proceed, 
with more copious extracts, than I have yet done. In Nov., 1807, 
Eleazar set out on another journey for the benefit of his health. 
He arrived at Hanover, and formed an acquaintance with the Pre- 
sident of the College, and other gentlemen. " Hanover," he says, 
"is a fine place. The College and other pubHc buildings are ele- 
gant. The village contains many handsome houses, surrounding a 
spacious plain which, in summer, is always covered with verdure, 
the whole appearance is charming, and the inhabitants are noted 
for their hospitality and polite attention to strangers. I was intro- 
duced to Rev. Dr. Smith, Professor of the learned languages. I 
was agreeably entertained with several of the students. I have ex- 
perienced that there are many temptations to which a young man is 
exposed, but if he is inclined to sustain a good character, he must 
associate only with those who are virtuous. The young gentlemen 
appear to be scholars, but I perceive that there is something wanting 
in them to make them complete gentlemen. Modesty is the orna- 
ment of a person." 

In May, 1808, a friend named Dr. Lyman urged Eleazar to go as 
a missionary to the heathen. He writes, " It is certainly an en- 
couragement to me to go as a missionary when I hear that young 
nobles and others in England are promoting the cause of the Blessed 
Redeemer. I feel perfectly willing to go and suffer for the sake of 
advancing the glorious Gospel of Christ. God is doing wonders in 
the world. I pray God to make me an instrument for promoting 
His own cause." 

In the month of June he became indisposed, with severe pain in 
the head, and a renewal of his old disorder, which appears to have 
been excruciating, and called forth earnest prayers for patience and 
fortitude. 

In the midst of these bodily sufferings he received the sad intelli- 
gence from Mrs. Ely, of the death of her husband. " The intelli- 
gence," he writes, " was overwhelming to me. Yes, my soul was 



ADOPTION AND EDUCATION. 217 

troubled, and witli a throbbing heart, I exclaimed, ' O let me die 
the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.' Al- 
though my lamentations were in secret, yet the Lord, my heavenly 
Father, heard my cry. The spirit of resignation was given me, and 
I was enabled to say amen to what God had done." 

The loss of Mr. Ely, his first friend and benefactor, who had been 
the Providential instrument of withdrawing him from the sepulchre 
of barbarism, in which he would otherwise have been entombed, 
brought to a close the first scene of his life in civivilized society in 
America. But he had now made friends for himself on all sides, 
and was known far and near as a young man of mark and promise, 
and yet around whom hung a mystery which no one was compe- 
tent to solve. Who was he, this Indian youth, who yet was not an 
Indian ? 

Of the current views of the most distinguished New England So- 
ciety on the subject of his race, Mr. Theodore Dwight has furnished 
me with a conclusive proof in the fact, that about this time he be- 
came attached to a connection of his family, and although the 
match was not effected, it was neither for want of esteem and admi- 
ration of his character, nor any objections on the score of Indian 
blood, because neither the lady herself, nor any other persons of 
discernment regarded him in reality as the descendant of Eunice 
"Williams, though, by the necessity of the case, he nominally passed 
as such. 

Eleazar remained at Mansfield and Long Meadows, making occa- 
sional visits to other places, until Dec. 22, 1809, when he was put 
under the tuition of Eev. Enoch Hale, of West Hampton, Massachu- 
setts, with whom he continued till the month of August, 1812, though 
during a great portion of the time he was absent on journeys to 
various places, which are minutely recorded in his journal, and was 
also engaged, under the patronage of the American Board of Mis- 
sions in a missionary visit to the St. Louis or Oaughnawaga Indians, 
to ascertain what prospect there was of introducing Protestantism 
among them. It is impossible to peruse the earnest and simple 

10 



218 THE LOdT TKINCE. 

outpouring of his feelings in his journals, without perceiving the 
entire devotion and dedication of his soul, mind, and powers to the 
work of converting his Indian brethren. His residence among Euro- 
peans, his instinctive delight in the refinements of social intercourse, 
the attentions shown him by all classes of persons, had not, for one 
moment, diverted his mind from the great purpose for which he con- 
ceived himself created — that of carrying the Gospel to the heathen. 
But his health continued very feeble, and severe pains in the head 
and chest rendered it difficult for him to continue his studies unin- 
terruptedly. At times he seems almost to have despaired of life, 
but the activity of his mind and body, rising superior to indisposi- 
tion, soon dissipated the gloom. His friends and physician advised 
him in April, 1810, to give up study, for a time, and travel south- 
ward, which, after some delay, he did. It was on this occasion that 
he first became acquainted with his future friend and Bishop, Dr. 
Hobart, who even at that early day was attracted by him and 
showed him much attention. 

On his return to Massachusetts, his pains returned, and every few 
pages some record of his sufferings occurs. In the beginning of 
1811, it was again thought expedient for him to travel, and he went 
to Canada, to see his family, taking every occasion of conversing 
with the Indians upon religious subjects. The Romish priests 
warned their people against listening to him, but the attention paid 
to him encouraged him to enter on what he designed should be the 
work of his life. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE 8E0EET 00EP8 



There are few who do not find actual life unlike as possible 
their youthful imaginings. Some happy beings, though the 
number is daily lessening, become what they purposed, and 
resemble forest trees, whose roots cleave in age to the soil which 



THE SECRET CORPS. 219 

nourished their first fibres. But most of us seem the sport of 
circumstances, and, in the struggle of life, are bruised, battered, and 
misshapen, till we emerge something, we can only recognise by 
faith in continuity of remembrance. 

" There's a destiny that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will." 

In the beginning of 1812, Mr. Williams set out on another 
journey to Canada, but this time as agent of the American Board 
of Missions. His health did not permit prolonged application to 
study, and, as it was deemed necessary he should survey his 
proposed field of missionary labor, and, by mixing with the 
Indians, perfect himself in the use of their language, he interrupted 
his literary preparation for the Congregational ministry, in order 
both to recruit his strength, and probe the sentiments of his 
reputed countrymen. He arrived at the Sault St. Louis, near 
Montreal, on Saturday, January 18th, and set to work zealously to 
accomplish his design, visiting the Indians all along the northern 
frontier, and discoursing wherever he went of " death, judgment, 
and eternity." But, for the most part, those he addressed, " acted 
as if they were possessed by the evil one." Addicted to intempe- 
rance, lax in their morals, devotees to heathenism, or equally blind 
adherents to Eome, he found it, to the last degree, diflacult to 
produce any effect on them. His feeble condition and shortness 
of breath were also very discouraging. He continue, however, 
his missionary tour until March, 1812, when he received a token 
that, although his religious exhortations might produce little result, 
he had personally acquired the esteem and confidence of the 
Indians. A message was sent him from the chiefs and counsellors 
of the Iroquois, requesting his attendance, and on presenting him- 
self at the council house, he was declared a chief of the nation. 
The name given him was, Onwarenhiiaki, or Tree Cutter, the same 
which had been applied to Sir William Johnson. A complimen- 



220 THE LOST PRINCE. 

tary speech was addressed to him on the occasion, to which he 
replied in nearly the following terms : — 

" Most honorable chiefs and counsellors of the Iroquois nation, I 
rise to speak a few words to your ears. I give you, with peculiar 
pleasure, many thanks. Your choice is very honorable to me. I 
am unfit for so high station in the nation. But as I desire to 
render important circumstances, I accept with diffidence the seat, 
which the chiefs and counsellors have pointed out to me, and shall 
ever endeavor to promote the best interests of the nation. May 
unity and harmony ever prevail between me and the senior 
counsellors, and may the chiefs and counsellors of the Iroquois 
nation, be ever interested in its welfare, and the people ever 
respect and be guided by them." 

When he ceased speaking, they thronged round and congratu- 
lated him, and he took advantage of the occasion, " to press upon 
them with tenderness the things which belonged to their eternal 
peace." They listened with courtesy and parted with expressions 
of regret. 

But, though there was much to encourage him, he found it 
impossible to accomplish anything at that time. " When you talk 
on political matters," said a chief, " you talk like a wise Indian 
counsellor — but, when you converse about religion, then you talk 
like a Frenchman." "How deplorable," he writes, "is the situa- 
tion of the Indians. When I consider that they are ignorant of 
the character and perfections of that Being who made them, 
and the way of salvation by Jesus Christ, then I am almost over- 
whelmed with grief and sorrow. O Lord, I beseech thee to send 
thy light and thy truth among the Ancients of America, and make 
them know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou 
has sent." 

Such were his occupations, feelings, and aspirations, when the 
war broke out between England and the United States. He had 
returned to West Hampton, when, in July, his reputation for 
ability, and for influence among the Indians, known in the highest 



THE SECRET CORPS. 221 

quarters, caused his immediate selection by government, as the 
best person, to prevent his reputed countrymen from taking up 
arms against the United States. The peaceful and devotional tenor 
of his thoughts and hopes was, therefore, broken in upon by the 
request that, he would repair immediately to the head-quarters of 
General Dearborn, and receive instructions concerning the views 
and objects of the General Government. Thomas Williams was at 
the same time invited to enter into the service of the United 
States — which invitation he finally accepted. The St. Eegis 
Indians, who occupied so critical a position between the two belli- 
gerent powers, and were undecided what course it was best for 
their interest and safety to pursue, also applied to Eleazar for 
advice in the emergency, and, thus, a variety of influences forced 
him, at a moment's warning, to abandon the peaceful seclusion of 
the parsonage, at "West Hampton, for the hot haste of military life. 
" I am sent for," he writes, under the date of July 27, " to pre- 
vent the Indians from taking the hatchet against the Americans. 
I tremble, my situation is very critical. Indeed, I hope God will 
direct me what to do." It was with great unwillingness that he 
entered on his new avocations. The prudential committee of the 
American Board of Foreign Missions, shortly after, spoke thus con- 
cerning him, and his late missionary tour. 

"Mr. Eleazar WilliamSj the Indian youth proposed for an Indian mis- 
sion, and who is in a course of education for that purpose, made a visit 
during last winter to his tribe, a journal of which has been seen by the 
committee. It is an excellent journal, affords great evidence of the piety 
and good sense of Mr. Williams, details some facts highly favorable to his 
reception among his red brethren, when the time shall come for him to be 
sent to them. When that time will come, is known only to Him who has 
ail events under his sovereign direction. At present, the prospects regard- 
ing the contemplated mission to the Caughnawaga Indians are darkened 
by the war, but this darkness may be dissipated, and brighter scenes open 
than man can foresee." 

All immediate prospect of prosecuting his mission, being thus 



222 THE LOST PRINCE. 

cut off, and duty calling him to the scene of war, he set out for 
Greenbush, where General Dearborn was then encamped, and 
arrived there on the 8th August. But, before plunging into the 
exciting scenes that followed, the reader will, I am sure, read with 
pleasure the following reflections of Mr. Williams on war, which I 
found among his papers, and which exhibit an amplitude of mind 
which has not been attributed to him, and show how little we can 
judge of the character and powers of men, when we see thera 
only in obscurity and depression : — 

" Many of the citizens in this state were opposed to the war. When in 
their company, the expediency or propriety of the war was often brought 
into view. It has been contended that, the more any people are civilized and 
Christianized, the greater is their aversion to war ; and the more powerful 
exertions are necessary to excite what is called the war-spirit. Were it not 
for the influence of a few ambitious or revengeful men, an offensive war 
could not be undertaken with any prospect of success — except where the 
mass of the people are either uncivilized or slaves. If, then, as great exer- 
tions should be made to excite a just abhorrence of war, as have often 
been made to excite a war-spirit, we may be very certain that rulers would 
find little encouragement to engage in a war, which is not strictly defen- 
sive. And, as soon as offensive wars shall cease, defensive wars will be, 
of course, unknown. It is an affront to common sense to pretend that, 
military officers and soldiers have no right to inquire whether war be just 
or unjust : and that all they have to do is to obey the orders of the govern- 
ment. Such doctrine is fit only to be taught to slaves without souls. If 
a man is called to fight, he should be faithfully informed and fully satis- 
fied that he is not to act the part of a murderer, that the blood of man 
may not be required at his hands. Every soldier ought to be impressed 
with the idea that offensive war is murderous ; and that no government 
on earth has any right to compel him to shed blood in a wanton and 
aggressive war. Yet, in the present state of general delusion, the soldiers 
and most of the citizens are treated as having no more right to judge of 
the justice or injustice of a war, than the horses employed in military ser- 
vice. On one side, a war is certainly unjust and murderous. Yet, on 
both sides, it is considered the duty of soldiers to submit to the orders of 



THE SECRET CORPS. 223 

government, and fight, whether it be murder or not murder. With the 
same propriety it might be considered as the duty of a citizen, to obey an 
order of government for murdering an individual of his own nation." 

Let the mind that conceived such sentiments have heen on a 
throne, and he v^ould have been accounted a model of political 
liberality. And yet this man has been the mark of obloquy and 
scorn, maligned, abused, ridiculed, defamed, driven from one 
place to another, cheated, reduced to poverty, and, because poor, 
scarcely deemed worthy, by his own brethren in the church, Avho 
had not discernment to understand his character, of common 
civility. 

On his arrival at the camp, Mr. Williams was treated courteously 
by General Dearborn, and remained two days closeted in his 
cabinet, with him and Gov. Tompkins, to learn what was required, 
and express his views as to the best method of carrying the 
objects into effect. Notwithstanding the religious tone of his 
mind, and his devotion to the ministry, there was something in his 
nature which was stirred by the pomp and circumstance of vrar, 
and he was made captive, as he expresses it, by " plumes, epau- 
lettes, red sashes, and glittering arms." In an instant he was in 
the vortex, and, with a facility which belongs to some natures, of 
adapting themselves to all circumstances, hasted to the north, to 
accomplish a mission very different from that which had so 
recently carried him there. With the excitement of his new 
employment, his health revived, and we hear little more of indis- 
position, except a great w^eakuess in the eyes, and occasional head- 
aches after fatigue. At first, he had no idea of permanently enter- 
ing the service of the government; but, being entrusted with 
military powers, and brought under military law, he was forced by 
circumstances to continue in the path which had thus, fortuitously 
opened before him, and was appointed Superintendent-General of 
the Northern Indian Department, with the most ample powers, 
having under his command the whole secret corps of Rangers and 
scouts of the army, who spread tliemselves everywhere, and freely 



224 THE LOST PRINCE. 

entered in and out of the enemy's camp. There was an under- 
standing that all comraunications between him and the government 
should be entirely secret, lest the lives or interests of individuals 
sliould be CDinpromised. But, as there was no prohibition against 
keeping a journal, a thing which, probably, did not enter into 
the ideas of General Dearborn, or the War Department, he faith- 
iully chronicled all his movements, though often without mention- 
ing the special object he had in view. The body of men who 
were placed at his command, were the most reckless, daring, and 
unscrupulous in the army, and he frequently speaks of it as " the 
terrible corps," and trembles at the accountability he assumed 
in placing himself at their head. Spread out in every direction, 
they reported to him every movement of the British forces, and 
the manoeuvres of the American army were, in a great measure, 
governed by the information received from him, as to the neces- 
sity of despatching troops to particular positions. He was thus 
the instrument of defeating the English, both by land and water, 
in the north and west. 

Parting from General Dearborn, who gave him letters to Colonel 
Clarke, of Burlington, and Major-General Mooers, of Plattsburg, he 
crossed the river about four o'clock, on Thursday, August 6, and, 
the next morning, set out for Vermont. At Poultney he met a 
British officer. General Baynes, with a flag of truce, accompanied 
by Major Clark, of the militia. On Sunday evening, August 9, 
he reached Burlington, and had an interview with Colonel Clarke, 
who kept him concealed, and, the following morning, crossed the 
lake with him. On Monday evening they arrived at Plattsburg. 
The necessities of war not permitting the strict observance of the 
Lord's Day, almost every week brings its confession of sin, and 
prayers that God would pardon the enforced violation of his law. 
He delivered his letter to Major-General Mooers ; and, in the after- 
noon of the 11th, a council of war was held, consisting of the Gene- 
ral, Colonel Clarke, Lieut.-Colonel Bedell, and Major Warford, at 
which, according to his discretional powers, he made a partial dis- 



THE SECRET CORPS. 225 

closure of the objects of his mission. General Mooers despatched 
him on his journey, with the following letter to Captain Tilden, o 
Constable : — 

" Plattsburg, August 12, 1812. 
" Sir : 

" You are hereby requested to render any assistance in your power to the 
bearer hereof — Mr. E. W., by giving him information relative to the 
situation of the enemy, Indian tribes, &c., &c., and keep the same to your- 
self relative to Mr. W., &c. What passes between you and him, let it be 
kept in perfect secresy. Mr. W. will keep this if he thinks proper. He 

will show it you. 

" Benjamin Mooers, Major-General. 
"Captain Rufus Tilden." 

He was also provided with the following passport : — 

" Plattsburg, Aiigust 12, 1812. 
" The bearer hereof, Mr. E. "Williams, is on business, and is going into 
Franklin County. Being a stranger he might be interrupted, and I have, 
therefore, handed this for his protection. 

" Benjamin Mooers." 

It was raining hard, and the roads were horrible, but he conti- 
nued on his journey, when, at an inn in the Chautegay Wood, he 
met Colonel Lewis, who was in the secret of his mission ; and, after 
consultation with him, found it necessary to return to Plattsburg, 
to meet some Indian chiefs who were expected there to receive 
money. He found them friendly to the United States, and obtained 
much information as to the condition of things at the north. The 
officers paid great attention, from policy, to the Indians. He then 
returned to Albany, which he reached on the 24th, and sat up 
with General Dearborn all night, communicating intelligence and 
arranging plans for the future. The excitement over, he fell sick, 
and all the conscientious scruples, natural to one with his feelings 
and position, began to torment him. " Oh, that God," he writes, 
" would make all men peaceful, and live together in unity. I am 
in distress for ray sins — they are great. Oh, most gracious God, 

10* 



226 THE LOST PRINCE. 

for Christ's sake, pardon them, and assist me to manage the affairs 
I am upon with integrity." 

After forming acquaintance witli General Bloomfield, he again 
set out for the north, on the 1st September, from Whitehall, in a 
little sloop, and a storm coming on, was in great danger on the 
lake. He reached Plattsburg on the 8th — the next day, General 
Bloomfield arrived, and was saluted by the gun-boats ; and, in the 
evening, Mr. Williams laid before him the reports of the Eangers, 
and had a long conference with him, '4n relation to the Indians, 
the force of the enemy, the state of his defences, the movements of 
his troops, the strength of his navy, and the condition of the roads 
from Ohamplain to the La Acadia plains." 

The next day he set out from Plattsburg, with protection from 

General Mooers, addressed to Major Young, in the following 

terms : — 

" Plattsburg, September 9, 1812. 
"Sir: 

" The bearer, Mr. Williams, proceeds to your post and to the westward, 

on business of an important nature, which entirely meets the approbation 

of General Mooers ; you will, therefore, afford him the protection necessary 

and proper to facilitate his purpose. 

" By order of the general, 

" John Warford, Aide-de-camp. 
« Major Young." 

Having delivered this letter to the Major at Chautegay, he pro- 
ceeded with a corresponding passport from him to Turner's Inn, 
where he met Captain Tilden, the commander of the station. He 
was carefully concealed from the sight of the Indians, but at French 
Mills, had a secret conference with the chiefs, whom he harangued, 
distributed to them money, and obtained the promise of adherence 
to the American cause. 

Eeturning through the woods, to Plattsburg, on the 16 th, he 
dispatched a confidential messenger to the Sault St. Louis, and 
though now irretrievably engaged in the business of the war, was 
troubled with conscientious scruples as to the morality of attempt- 



THE SECRET CORPS. 227 

ing to withdraw the British Indians from allegiance to their gov- 
ernment. He had a conference with Gen. Bloomfield on this ques- 
tion, and says with great simplicity, " we agreed that if we can 
bring them over to the American side, it was proper and justifi- 
able." Every day and hour brought its occupation, and he was 
hurried hither and thither. On the 21st September, he received a 
communication from the Commander-in-chief, to which he sent a 
reply express, by way of Lake George, and immediately set out to 
the lines, to meet his Eangers and receive their report. Hearing of 
the capture of seven Indians by the British, he was fearful lest his 
messenger, William, whom he had dispatched to St. Louis, was 
among them, and set out on Sunday, 27th, to Chazy, to ascertain 
the fact, but had the happiness to find him returned in safety, 
and spent the remainder of the day in conversing with him and 
some Indians on religious subjects. Several chiefs now arrived 
from the Sault St. Louis, and on Monday were presented to Gen. 
Bloomfield, to whom the General and Col. Clarke presented their 
swords. Col. Clarke also gave his rifle to William the messenger, 
who Mr. Williams despatched to St. Regis, and to the Indians of 
the Lake of the two mountains, to inform them that powder was 
ready for them. He now returned to Albany, carrying two chiefs 
with him to present to General Dearborn, who was highly delight- 
ed with the success of the enterprise. A brilliant entertainment 
was given, but in the midst of officers and ladies, and music and 
general merriment, young Williams— the excitement of enterprise 
being now over— was moody and melancholy, between the effects 
of sickness and conscientious difficulties. But not much time could 
be given to reflections of this kind. The next day after the enter- 
tainment, Oct. 8th, the following entry occurs :— 

" As the enemy have had in contemplation for some time past to send 
troops to St. Regis, to attack the Indians, and Captain Montigny, the resi- 
dent agent has made gi-eat efforts to rouse the war spirit of the friendly 
part of the tribe against the Americans, from self-preservation— which is 
the first law of human nature— that post must be attacked. I have re- 



228 THE LOST PRINCE. 

ceived orders to this effect from the Commander-in-chief, but am left in a 
great measure to my discretion, and the necessity for such an attack. The 
order is issued upon Major Youngs, at Chautegay, to march with his corps, 
attack and carry the place, but have a care not to injure the friendly part 
of the tribe. The Eangers are required to give a faithful account to the 
Major, of the strength and position of the enemy. If the Major is true, he 
v/ill succeed. Bravery is not wantmg to him." 

The attack proved successful. St. Eegis was carried — a number 
of prisoners captured, and the first flag taken from the British during 
the war. Mr. Williams again set out from Albany, on the 14th 
October. Trom Plattsburg, which he reached after a variety of 
adventures, on 3d November, he went to Cumberland's Head, to 
issue orders to the Eangers, and on the 5th, by the invitation of 
Gen. Bloomfield, attended a secret council of war, at which he pre- 
sented his report, which he had written while lying in bed. The 
result of the council was an order to prepare for the winter cam- 
paign, and repair the boats and wagons for transportation. On 
7th November, he received an order from the Commander-in-chief, 
to return to Albany, but, before starting, was able to communicate 
to Gen. Bloomfield intelligence that the enemy were preparing for 
an attack. The first artillery train arrived. In the evening, Gens. 
Bloomfield and .Mooers discussed with him the plans of the 
ensuing campaign ; he sent out orders in difierent directions to the 
Eangers, and information to the Indians, and the next morning was 
on his way to Albany, express, issuing orders as he went, to some 
of the posts. In the afternoon he heard a heavy cannonading in 
the direction of the lines. Arriving at Albany on the 10th, he 
dined with the Commander-in-chief, received from the war depart- 
ment a complimentary communication, concerning the eflScient 
services of his corps, and further insti'uctions in relation to his 
department. He left for the north the next day, but snatched a 
few moments to have a conversation with the Eev. Mr. Clowes, an 
Episcopal clergyman, at Albany, and obtain some religious advice. 
The troops were now moving in all directions for the lines — for 



THE SECRET CORPS. 229 

which he himself set out post, issuing orders to the whole corps of 
observation. He returned from the lines to Plattsburg, on the 
evening of the 18th November, having performed all the duties 
assigned him, and sent his report to the Commander-in-chief. 
Under date of November 20, he writes :— 

" A council of war was held to-day, in which I appeared somewhat con- 
spicuous, as I was the only person who could give the information desired. 
In this council disclosures were made, to a certain extent in relation to 
the campaign, which were entirely contrary to my expectations, and far 
from being honorable to the public service. Still there is hope for a 
revision of the decision of this council, and this must be upon certain cir- 
cumstances in regard to the enemy, but in the meantime, every demon- 
stration must be made by the American army of its intended invasion of 
the British Provmce. By the reports of the Eangers, the enemy is not so 
formidable in our front as to give any fears of the unfavorable result if our 
advance was made upon them. The Canadians are still unwilhng to bear 
arms against the Americans, since they had a skirmish with the royal 
troops at La Chine, in August last. They are forced into the service, md 
no dependence can be placed upon them." 

The season was too far advanced for much to be accomplished. 
The corps of observation, under command of Mr. Williams, was, 
however, incessantly active, and the slightest movement on either 
side faithfully reported to him, and provision made for every 
emergency as it arose. At the latter end of November the artil- 
lery train moved towards Plattsburg for winter-quarters, and the 
campaign being over, he returned to Charlotte in Vermont. The 
troops were dying in great numbers. "I had an interview," thus 
the journal for 1812 concludes, "this afternoon Pec. 12) with 
Gen. Mooers, and made arrangements with him in regard to the 
movements of the Eangers. I have apprised them of my removal, 
with orders to direct their reports accordingly. One is with me 
now and takes my orders, and will issue them to others. God 
bless them." 



230 THE LOST PRINCE. 



CHAPTER XII. . 

THE WAE JOTJENAL. 

With the intuition pertaining only to the highest order of minds, 
the divinity student had displayed the abilities of a military offi- 
cer, been admitted to the secret councils of those highest in com- 
mand, and honorably and successfully performed some of the most 
arduous duties which could be assigned to man — duties which a 
Christian nation at war could only, with a just regard for its own 
honor, consign to one who united rare ability with strict fidelity and 
unassailable conscientiousness. But though he had thus proved 
himself, intellectually, equal to any position in which Providence 
might place him, and been engaged in occupations the hardest to 
reconcile with devotional feeling, his humble and unfeigned spirit 
of piety was unaltered. 

The Journal for 1813 opens thus : — 

^^Jan'y 1. — A pleasant morning. I am permitted to see the be- 
ginning of another year. What shall I render unto the Lord for 
all his benefits ? May I live more to His glory. How ungrateful I 
have been for the many and undeserved mercies I have received 
from his benificent hand. I will endeavor, by the help of God, to 
live more like a Christian. my God, give me grace to love thee 
above all things, to live and walk in the ways of thy command- 
ments, and preserve me from all the temptations with which I am 
surrounded. This has been a solemn day with me. My medita- 
tions have been upon death, judgment, and eternity." 

My intention was to have epitomized the following journal. But 
it is sacred as an historical document, and though very long, I 
transcribe it entire, since nothing can more thoroughly exhibit the 
man, and show the claims he has on the esteem of all men, and 
especially of the citizens of the United States, than the simple pages 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 231 

in which he has jotted down, with careless hand, his actions and 
feelings during these trying times. 

" I am ordered by Col. Larned to repair to St. Regis. I am pre- 
paring for the jaunt. 

" In Ghautegmj Woods, Jan'y 2.— Left Plattsburg this morning 
early, in a sleigh. My waiter with me. Now, at Robert's Inn. It 
has been a cold day. Here I learned the movements of the 
enemy, at St. Johns and Ohamblee. I have sent an express to 
Plattsburg. 

^^ French Mills, Jany, 3, 1813.— Arrived about 10 o'clock, this 
evening — suffered much from the cold. I have sent out two faith- 
ful Indians who I found here. Yesterday, a heavy detachment of 
the enemy passed through Cornwall, for the Upper Country. I 
met here one of our secret Rangers. His report will be useful for 
the commanders of Sacketts Harbour and Plattsburg. 

" French Mills, Jany. 4, 1813.— I met in council, four of the 
American chiefs. They are still firm to remain neutral in the pre- 
sent contest. Capt. Peters delivered a lengthy speech, on the 
occasion, the substance of which is intended to be communicated 
to Major-General Dearborn, Gov. Tompkins, and Gen. Mooers. 
I exhorted them to remain firm to their resolution, and continue to 
be faithful to the Americans. We parted with many friendly 
expressions. May God bless them, is the sincere desire of my heart. 
I made some arrangements with the Commissary Hastings, to 
continue to issue rations to them. 

" Evening. — I am informed that the enemy are making a great 
preparation at Kingston, to attack Sacketts Harbour. I shall hear 
more of this. 

" Chautegay, 4 Corners, Jany. 5, 1813. — From the French Mills, 
this morning. I am greatly concerned for the St. Regis Indians. 
The British governor threatens to annihilate them, but the Ameri- 
can part are determined to resist him. Sir John Johnson is active in 
persuading them to join the English forces. Col. Scott, the com- 
mandant at Couteau du Lac, has issued an order for my arrest, if 
possible. . I have, this evening, issued an order to the whole secret 
corps of our Rangers — and that in positive terms, in case of my 
arrest by the enemy, to take and make prisoners of as many as it 
may be in their power, of the high ofiicers of the British army, 
and even Sir Geo. Provost. The faithful and brave H., captain of 



232 THE LOST PRINCE. 

the corps, accepted the order with joy, and promised it shall he 
performed to the full extent. ' Now,' said he, ' life and death are 
with us.' This is the first desperate order I have issued to the 
corps, but there is no alternative in the case. 

'•'• Plattsburg^ Jany. 6, 1813. — Left Chautegay early this morning, 
but not without fears that I may be waylaid and caught in some 
extensive woods I had to pass. I apprised my waiter of this, who, 
like a brave soldier, prepared his rifle for resistance, but reached 
safe, and suffered no inconvenience but the cold. The sun was 
bright, the sky clear, but the air piercing. I have a heavy cough 
upon me, and am somewhat feverish this evening. At Robinson's 
Inn, I was informed by a person who came, yesterday, from the 
lines, that the enemy were reinforcing the garrison at Isle Aux 
Noix^ and a party of Indians were stationed at La Cole. 

'■'' Plattsburg^ Jany. 7, 1813. — I sent my report to Col. Larned, 
this morning, at Burlington, as I am not able to go myself thither, 
being much indisposed. The garrison physician is in attendance. 

" E'vening. — Gen. Mooers called upon me, and I communicated to 
him the substance of my report to Col. Larned. Rev. Mr. Weeks 
also called, with whom I had an interesting conversation upon the 
subject of religion. He is a pious and godly man. My religious 
meditations have been greatly interrupted from the many duties 
which are just now pressing upon me. Oh, let me not forget my 
duty to God, but may I walk more closly with him, and that daily, 
as one who loves him with all the heart. Let me not forget thee, 
O my God, in whom I live, move, and have my being. O 
Heavenly Father, have mercy on thy unworthy servant, forgive all 
his sins for Christ's sake. Give him grace to love thee more — 
make him by faith to be united to thee, and enable him by grace 
to walk in the ways of thy commandments. 

" January 10, Plattsburg^ 1813. — It is to be regretted that the 
northern army is in a sick condition — ten or twelve men are daily 
buried. Dysentery and diarrhoea are the principal diseases, which 
are often combined with typhus fever. Colonel Pike, who com- 
mands this post, is doing all in his power to assuage the sufferings 
of his troops, by making the medical department do its duty — the 
noted Dr. Mann being at its head. 

" PlatAsburg^ January 29. — The order issued on the 4th instant 
by me, at Chautegay, upon the whole corps of Rangers, I am happy 
to say has been responded to with the greatest cheerfulness ; and 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 233 

they will exert themselves to the utmost, to fulfil the import of 
the order. B. H, and L. have engaged to take the Governor-General 
a prisoner, and bring him safely into the United States. 

" February 3, 1813.— Information has been received that the 
enemy has been concentrating his disposable force at Kingston, 
Upper Canada, distant thirty miles from Sacketts Harbor, with a 
view to attack that place, upon which I ordered the Eangers to be 
on the alert. For further information, one was despatched for 
that place. Three days after, another was despatched to Ganon- 
naque. 

''Burlington (Vt.\ February 10, 1818.— I came here to have 
an interview with Brigadier-General Chandler, and communicated 
to him a certain intelligence ,which caused him to delay his former 
intentions in regard to his military operations in this quarter. 
Here I received further information from the Eangers, that the 
enemy were sending troops to Kingston, and that some troops have 
been sent from Quebec to Montreal, and more are expected. 

" Plattsburg, February 17.— I am fully persuaded, by the infor- 
mation of the Rangers, near Montreal, that the enemy is contem- 
plating to attack Sacketts Harbor. T shall, at all events, apprise 
General Dearborn this day. 

" Plattsburg^ February^ 1813. — We are informed that Major For- 
sythe, from Ogdensburg, crossed the St. Lawrence, and surprised 
the guard at Elizabethtown ; took fifty-two prisoners, one major, 
three captains, and two lieutenants. 

" Plattsburg^ February 20. — The preparation of the enemy, at 
Kingston, is very certain. The Eangers have returned. Their 
reports are corroborated from other respectable sources. My duty 
requires me to make a formal communication to Major-General 
Dearborn, at Albany, who will, I trust, duly appreciate the alarm- 
ing intelligence. I have also ventured to apprize the commanding 
officer at Sacketts Harbor, of the intentions of the enemy upon that 
post. 

"• Plattsburg^ March 6, 1813.— We are informed that, on the 21st 
ultimo, the enemy attacked Major Forsyfche, at Ogdensburg, and 
succeeded in expelling him from the town, after a short conflict. 

" Plattsburg^ March 9, 1813.— General Dearborn has duly appre- 
ciated the intelligence conveyed to him, in relation to the enemy's 
movements and intentions on the port of Sacketts Harbor. He 
will make, or has already made, a quick movement for that post. 



234 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Both sides appear to be preparing for some heavy stroke upon each 
other, in the ensuing campaign. 

" Plattsburg^ 14,th March. — I am informed it is in contemplation 
for Colonel Pike's regiment to repair to Sacketts Harbor, without 
delay. 

" Evening. — The colonel has called on me for information of the 
route he intends to take on his way to the Harbor. I am ordered, 
immediately, to repair to Malone, and French Mills. So I will pro- 
ceed to-morrow morning ; my waiter will accompany me. 

" Ghautegay., Four Corners^ March 15. — French news from 
Canada by one of the Kangers. Sent on an express to Colonel 
Pike, at eleven o'clock, with intelligence I have received. 

" French Mills^ March 17. — Heard much of the movements of 
the enemy. Saw the Indian chiefs. Their future conduct was 
explained to them. 

'-'• Plattsburg., March 19. — I made my report to Colonel Pike. 
He appeared to be satisfied. He has himself received his instruc- 
tions to proceed with his regiment to Sacketts Harbor. I am 
informed that General Dearborn has gone thither. 

" I had a long conversation this evening with one of the officers 
of artillery upon religion, who is to all appearance an infidel. 

" FlattsMrg^ March 27. — Colonel Pike has gone with his regi- 
ment, by way of Malone. I regret much that this amiable and 
accomplished officer is taken from this post. His whole regiment 
were conveyed in sleighs. The inhabitants were pressed for their 
teams. It was a strange sight to see so many of them together. 

^'' Plattsburg., March 30, 1813. — By the Eangers I have heard 
that since the arrival of General Dearborn, at the Harbor, and the 
movement of Colonel Pike, the enemy themselves are alarmed lest 
they be invaded by the American force. 

''''Burlington (F^.), April 4, 1813. — I came here to confer with 
Colonel Clax'ke, who commands this post, about some money con- 
cerns. The Deputy-Paymaster, Mr. Hatch and Mr. Sheldon, are 
concerned in the matter. The expenditures in my department are 
rendered and settled. The secret service-money of the government 
is wholly expended. Orders are m.ade out, to the quarter-master- 
general, for more. 

" I had a pleasant interview with the Eev. Mr. Haskell, of this 
place, who, with President Sanders, has directed my theological 
studies. I have read Stackhouse's Body of Divinitj^ — Hopkin's 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 235 

System — Edward's on Eedemptlon, and other theological works 
which they have placed before me. I have read much for this two 
years past. The Eev. Mr. Y/eeks, of Plattsburg, has assisted me in 
obtaining books, &c. Indeed, all the Congregationalist clergy in 
this quarter seemed to be interested in my welfare. 

''Charlotte {Vt.\ April 12.— At the hotel of Colonel Wil- 
liams, I have made my head-quarters. It is my home. I have a 
retired room, where I have spent many pleasant hours in reading 
the Scriptures, and meditations upon that sacred volume. Prayer 
and praise have been offered to my Creator and bountiful benefac- 
tor. O, thanks be to God for those happy hours I have enjoyed in 
communion with him. At the same time, many unhappy hours 
have I passed, because my sins were set before me. I saw tljat I 
was a sinner. I was made to see and feel that unless my heart was 
sanctified by the Spirit of God, I was none of his. But, by prayer 
and supplication, I was made joyful in the Lord. 

" Charlotte^ April 13, 1813. — My mind has been in a very com- 
fortable state since my return to my solitary room — here I would 
wish to be in communion with my God. 

" The two great contending parties appear to be, for the present, 
in a tranquil state ; preparing, however, for a severe and bloody 
conflict. O, that God would be pleased to put an end to all wars, 
and advance the spiritual kingdom of Christ upon earth. 

" I am again called on by the war department to perform certain 
duties which are delicate and dangerous in the extreme. I have 
issued my orders to the whole corps of Eangers, to be in readiness 
to perform the duties assigned to each of them. This is a terrible 
and efficient corps in the service of the government. No move- 
ment is made by the enemy but it is known to them. They are 
constantly, as it were, within the enemy's camp, or on every side 
of them. This corps was embodied by Col. Isaac Clark, of 11th 
Eegt., in connection with the secretary of war. As to my position 
with them, my order is final. No appeal can be made from it. 
They are constantly exposed to martial-law and to death. Their 
courage, bravery, and fidelity save them, the war department 
often applauds their daring conduct, and rewards their services 
with high wages. They are faithful to the government. My 
orders they are always ready to obey, at which I have often been 
surprised. When I am absent from the department, Major-Gen. 



236 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Mooers takes my place. He was an officer during the Revolution, 
under his uncle, Col. Hazen. 

" Plattsburg^ April 16. — By the request of the deputy quarter- 
master, I am, to-morrow, to proceed to Albany. 

" Albany^ April 19. — 1 had an interview with Governor Tomp- 
kins, who laid a certain communication before me from the war 
department, to which I answered, with the assistance of Mr. 
Vanderhayden. It is secret and confidential in its nature. 

^'- Allany^ April 20. — To-day, again, I had a long conference 
with the governor, who committed to writing much of my commu- 
nication, and was highly pleased with my management of certain 
manoeuvres of the enemy. The quarter-master-general has once 
mor^ replenished the secret service money. I am to return 
to-morrow. I called upon the Eev. Mr. Clowes, and had an 
agreeable interview with him. He presented me some books. 

'•'■ Poultney^ April 21. — I came to Troy yesterday afternoon, and 
called upon the Eev. Mr. Butler, an Episcopal clergyman, who 
labored with me to study the claims of the Episcopal clmrch. It 
was wholesome advice. I shall attend to his directions. 

" Middleburg^ April 22. — I was visited by several officers, and 
spent the evening pleasantly with them. Paymaster Sheldon 
joined our company. He is an amiable young gentleman. 

" Burlington^ Vt., April 25. — The conference with the Eev. Mr. 
Haskel and President Sanders was serious and affecting. O may I 
improve them. 

" PlaUsburg^ May 15. — We have a melancholy intelligence 
to-day, that on the attack upon Toronto, Upper Canada, Col. Pike 
was slain, but that the place was carried and taken on the 2Tth 
April. I lament the loss of the amiable and brave Col. Pike. . 

'■'■ Plattshurg^ May 18. — I was called upon this afternoon by 
Lieut. Montieth, of the navy, with a note from Commodore 
McDonough, to meet him and other officers of his station, to-mor- 
row, at 3 o'clock, in a council of war. Gen. Mooers is unwell, I 
have had no reports from the Eangers, and I am somewhat con- 
cerned. I have sent on an express to Champlain, to-day. There 
are various reports in circulation of the movements of the enemy. 
The duties assigned to me by the government are arduous and diffi- 
cult — to the actors, dangerous in the extreme. May they escape 
detection. If detected they are lost. One of the enemy's secret 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 237 

agents is now confined and strongly guarded. He must, I fear, suf- 
fer death in accordance with martial-law. 

'''' Plattsburg^ May 19. — My communications in the council, yes- 
terday, were received with attention. Gen. Smith was highly 
gratified, and ordered something extra to the Eangers, to 
encourage them in their fidelity to the government. The 
extensive power invested in me, I have endeavored, constantly, to 
exercise with the greatest moderation. The great and glorious 
principles of religion have governed all my acts, as I trust. Thus 
far the war department have approved my acts, and also the ofli- 
cers, with whom I have been immediately connected in these 
frontiers. Major-Gen. Mooers and Mr. Sailly, of the custom depart- 
ment, have been very useful to me in my movements. 

'''• Plattsburg^ May 21. — Eeceived communication from the west 
to-day, which has the appearance that the enemy is meditating an 
attack upon some posts on Lake Ontario — Oswego or Sacketts 
Harbour perhaps. 

" Plattsburg^ May 23. — I learn, by the Eangers, that Sir George 
Provost has passed Prescott for Kingston. I have, by express, 
communicated this to proper ofiicers at Ogdensburg and Sacketts 
Harbour, and requested the latter to alarm the officer at Oswego. 

" Plattsburg^ June 1. — As I expected, information has just 
reached me, by the Eangers, that the enemy made an attack upon 
Sacketts Harbour, on the 29th ulto., and were defeated by Gen. 
Brown, with a considerable loss on our side. Ools. Backus and 
Mills are among the slain. I believe the timely information from 
this department, has saved Sacketts Harbour. Would to God that 
our ofl&cers were more vigilant, and the government active in its 
operations on these frontiers. 

" Plattsburg^ July 3. — A heavy cannonading is heard from the 
north, about 10 o'clock this morning. Lieut. Sidney Smith, with two 
armed schooners (the Growler and Eagle), went yesterday to the 
lines — ^he is undoubtedly attacked. 

" Plattsburg^ July 4. — By the Eangers I am informed that at the 
extreme end of this Lake, Smith met some of the enemy's gun- 
boats, by whom he was attacked, and pursued so far into the Nar- 
rows that he could not return with his vessels against the south wind, 
other heavy gun-boats from the Isle aux Noix attacked him. After 
a severe resistance, of three hours, against a superior force, he was 
compelled to surrender. By this unfortunate catastrophe Oommo- 



238 THE LOST PRINCE, 

dore McDonough is reduced to a single schooner and a few gun- 
boats. Lieut. Smith was imprudent to venture into the Narrows — 
he was undoubtedly decoyed by the enemy. He is a brave and 
daring officer. The British are now masters of the Lake. They 
will, no doubt, soon show this. I was requested by General Mooers 
to call out the regular troops at Pike's encampment to make their 
appearance on the Lake shore. They did so. 

" Flattsburg^ July 10. — I have information from the Deputy Quar- 
ter Master, at Albany, that Gen. Wade Hampson is to assume the 
command of the Northern Army. Strange that the government 
should appoint southern men to such responsible stations at the 
north. Gen. Mooers ought to have this appointment, Montreal 
would be in his possession in a month. He is a brave, judicious, 
and prudent officer, and, withal, extremely popular with his fellow- 
citizens. They would follow him with the greatest cheerfulness. 

" Plattsburg^ July 16. — Some of the St. Regis Indians came in to- 
day. From them we received some interesting information of the 
movements of the enemy. Ool. Lewis, an influential chief of this 
tribe is here. He was a confidential friend of Gens. Washington 
and Schuyler during the Revolution. His friendship is firm to the 
Americans. He says that the English will be beaten in this war. 

" Plattsburg^ July 18.- — I have received from the war department, 
through Gov. Tompkins, a communication which, to me, is somewhat 
curious, and shows how little those great men are acquainted with 
northern aflFairs. In my communication to the department I have 
respectfully represented to the government that the reduction of 
Montreal, if this is in their contemplation, is to be effected by con- 
centrating its whole force on the Northern Frontiers, at Lake Cham- 
plain, and force its way by removing the abbatis at the river La 
Cole to the plains of La Arcadia, where, undoubtedly, in such a 
case, the first battle would be fought, between the regular armies, 
on the issue of which will depend the fate of that city, the fortress 
of Isle Aux Noix, St. Johns, and Ohambly, and when Montreal is 
once occupied, by an American army, the communication between 
the Upper and Lower Oanadas is cut off, the British army, in the 
upper province, must inevitably die. If it exist it must fight through 
the American army at Montreal, to reach Quebec. All this, and 
much more was respectfully submitted to the war department, as I 
was requested to give my opinion and sentiments on this delicate 
subject. I was happy to find that Gen. Mooers and the Hon. Judge 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 239 

More, of Ohamplain, concurred fully with my opinion, and senti- 
ments. 

'•'• Plattsburg^ July 21. — I have heard several able discourses from 
the Eev. Mr. Weeks, on the Decrees of God, concerning which I can- 
not agree with him in every respect. Gen. Mooers seems to submit 
to them as in accordance with the Scriptures. Gen. Skinner, my 
particular friend, dissents from them. He pleads the agency of man. 
He is well versed in the Scriptures, i.e.^ he retains much in memory. 
Mr. ISTichols, a lawyer, is greatly opposed, he is willing to hear the 
subject discussed. 

" Plattsburg^ July 24.- — I am informed by the Eangers that the 
enemy at St. Johns and Isle aux Noix appeared to be preparing for 
an immediate expedition, but to what point, of course, it is not 
known. 

" Plattsburg^ July 25. — I received a note from General Hamp- 
ton's aide-de-camp, last evening, in which I am requested to repair 
to his camp, and report myself. I am to start to-day by way of 
Essex. Captain Stevenson had informed me, who had an interview 
with the General, that he was in a bad humor with my depart- 
ment. This hastens me to have an interview with him. I under- 
stand that he is by no means popular with the troops. This is most 
unfortunate for him and the public service. 

" Plattsburg^ July 26. — I was unable to start yesterday on my 
intended jaunt to Burlington, in consequence of my receiving 
despatches from the War Department which required my imme- 
diate reply. General Mooers has called on me, to inform me that 
he had an interview to-day with several American merchants, who, 
by permission, left the Canadian provinces ; and learned from them 
that the enemy were preparing for an expedition. This is only a 
corroboration of what I knew before. I have apprized the Gene- 
ral of my intended jaunt to Burlington. 

" Burlington^ July 30. — I arrived here, this morning, from Char- 
lotte; and, at eleven o'clock, I had an interview with General 
Hampton, who, at first, seemed very polite and flattering in his 
language ; but, in the discussion in regard to his military opera- 
tions against Canada, he was out of tune. He said, he knew the 
course he intended to take to be successful in his campaign, that 
he had fine troops under his command, and that they would do all 
that he would ask them. But, he was reminded that they were 
raw troops. Upon this he uttered tremendous oaths, and intimated 



240 THE LOST PRINCE. 

that any man who would hint anything of the kind was not true 
to the American cause. This brought on an altercation between 
the General and myself. I was aware he knew my position with 
the General Government ; and I, knowing at the same time that I 
was beyond his reach, dared to confront him. I frankly stated to 
him that I knew my duty, and should faithfully perform it, 
as required by the War Department ; and if he did not wish to 
avail himself of the benefits which my department was capable of 
rendering to the government, its armies, and generals, I should con- 
tinue to do my duty. When the General found I was firm, and 
stood in no fear of him, he lowered his tone, and said, ' Well, I 
suppose I must look to you for information.' ' That,' said I, ' you 
may do as you please. But, you may expect to be attacked by the 
enemy in a few days.' ' In a few days,' he said, and appeared to 
be surprised. 'Yes, the enemy are certainly preparing for 
some expedition. I cannot say to what point.' ' If so,' said he, 
' you will prove to be a true prophet.' With this, I took my leave 
of the most unpleasant commander of the American army I have 
met with. 

" Charlotte^ July 31. — This morning I started to return to Platts- 
burg, and went as far as Grand Isle, at the Bar; there I met, about 
twelve o'clock, Mr. Myers, who informed me it would be danger- 
ous to proceed, as the enemy were in force, advancing by water to 
Plattsburg, and he presumed they were already in possession of the 
place. I, therefore, returned to Burlington and Charlotte. 

" Plattsburg^ August 2. — I returned last evening to my post, and 
found that the enemy had been here, and no resistance was made 
to their landing. Their force was twelve hundred men, under the 
command of Colonels Murray and Williams, wlio d.estroyed all 
public property, and then wantonly burnt store-houses and the 
residences of several of the inhabitants. The same day the British 
flotilla passed Burlington, and threw some shots into the town ; 
and General Hampton had his five thousand men in battle array, 
on the bank of the lake, as if he was to be attacked by land. He 
ought to have had at least a part of his force at Plattsburg ; but 
this is one of the many blunders he has already made in the com- 
mand of the northern army. 

" My report of this aftair to the Department of War, and that of 
Governor Tompkins, were drawn up in cautious language ; but yet 
I spoke, somewhat plainly, of my fears in regard to General Hamp- 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 241 

ton. I am informed that the Secretary of War will soon be at 
Sacketts Harbor, to see, himself, the preparations of the grand 
army, before its descent to the St. Lawrence. 

'•'• Flattsburg^ August 10. — There is another important communi- 
cation ; I say this, although I do not know precisely its language, yet 
I know its import. I forwarded it to-day, by one of the confiden- 
tial Rangers, to its destination. I am politely requested to pay no 
regard to General Hampton's rough language — but to aid him to 
the full extent which my department is capable, which may be of 
great benefit to the public service. 

" Plattsburg^ August 16. — An ofllcer from General Hampton has 
been with me to-day, and I have received a certain requisition at 
his hand. It is somewhat curious, but shall be performed as far as 
this Department is able to execute it. 

" Plattsburg^ August 22.— I have made out a communication for 
General Hampton, which I have forwarded to him to-day. The 
chiefs from St. Regis have been here, and received their annuity 
from the people of the State of New York. We received from 
them some important intelligence, in corroboration of that received 
from the Rangers. They have had a communication from the 
Caughnawaga chiefs, which is friendly in its import. The chiefs 
expressed to General Mooers their sincere attachment to the 
American cause. 

'"'• Platts'burg^ Septemlyer 6. — By communication from the Adjutant 
General, I perceive General Hampton is soon to make a move from 
Burlington, for the lines. I am requested by him to reconnoitre 
the position at La Cole river, and examine the possibility of his 
penetrating, with the army, from Chautegay Four Corners into 
Canada. I shall consult with those who are best acquainted with 
that section of the country, and send some of the Rangers thither. 
Governor Tompkins has no confidence in General Hampton as a 
general to command an army. 

" Plattslurg^ 8epteinber 8. — General Mooers has had an interview 
with General Hampton. Commodore McDonough's flotilla is on 
the lake. Evening. — I understand that General Hampton is about 
to move with his army from Burlington. I am ordered by him to 
meet him on his arrival at Cumberland Head. 

" Novemler 9, 1813. — In consequence of a fall from my horse, I 
have been unable to write until now. Eecajpitulation. — As requested, 
I had an interview with General Hampton, at Cumberland Head. 

11 



242 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Through him, I was requested by General Wilkinson, from Sacketts 
Harbor, to advance within six miles of Ogdensburg, and there 
remain until further orders — that is, till his arrival, with his army, 
at that place. To this General Hampton made no objection, but 
refused that, when there, I should be subjected to the orders of 
General Wilkinson, and, finally, opposed my going at all. When 
he saw that the public service required it, he gave me orders to 
proceed, with positive instructions not to remain there two hours 
after accomplishing the duty assigned me. In this interview I 
learned from him the route he intended to take to enter into the 
British Province — the diflaculties of which, as well as the many 
obstacles he would encounter, were he to attempt to reach Mon- 
treal by that route, were pointed out to him. He was also, in 
vain, told that the enemy were weak in his front, and that the 
great road from the river La Cole to the La Acadia plains, and St. 
Johns, was the only practicable route, at this time, for his army to 
pass, and the abbatis might be removed by one hundred and fifty 
axemen, protected by a sufficient corps. If he met any opposition 
in these woods, it would only be by the Canadian militia and 
Indians. After reaching the plains, he would contest only with 
the regulars, which were few, while, by his cannons, he could keep 
the militia and Indians at a respectful distance from him. By 
taking this route, he would distract the enemy, and divide their 
forces so as to favor the descent of the grand army down the St. 
Lawrence, from Sacketts Harbor. I informed him that, according 
to the reports of the Eangers, there were, at this time, at Mon- 
treal, about two hundred sailors, and three hundred and fifty 
marines. The numbers of the militia were not known, and some 
regulars were expected from Quebec. As for the Isle Aux Noix, 
it might be left untouched, and kept in awe by a strong militia 
force. It is contrary, indeed, to military rule, to leave an enemy 
in the rear, yet its position, and the necessity of the case, may jus- 
tify its infraction. The garrison would be cooped up in the 
fortress, offer us no hinderance, and, if the attack on Montreal be 
successful, must ultimately surrender. I also told him that great 
efforts were made to distract the Indians, and that they had been 
informed by some of the Eangers, that Montreal is about to expe- 
rience the fate which happened to it in 1760, when it surrendered 
to two armies, under Generals Amherst and Haviland, one of which 
advanced by way of the St. Lawrence, and the other by that of 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 243 

Lake Champlain— that the Americans have no desire to shed their 
blood, nor do they even ask them to espouse their cause ; but their 
object is to save them, if they continue neutral, from the horrors 
of war, educate their children, and make them, like themselves 
happy, through the influence of Christianity and civilization, while 
the British Government occupy their land, but give them no pay- 
ment for the same. They were staggered by this intelligence, and 
great dissension was produced, in the midst of which the Rangers 
made a narrow escape. 

"Having communicated all this to the General, I left him and 
his army near Champlain, I proceeded to the place of my des- 
tination. I called upon the Hon. Pliney Moore, and consulted 
with him upon certain points. The information he gave was very 
useful. He is one of the most honorable gentlemen in these parts, 
although his political sentiments may be different from those of the 
present administration, yet he is a true friend to his country, and 
will do all in his power to maintain its honor. At Chautegay 4 
Corners, I was, for the first time, since my coming on these fron- 
tiers, alarmed for my safety. By a confidential friend I received 
information, that the enemy's scouts were frequently seen on the 
lines in that quarter, and had occasionally approached the great 
road from Plattsburg to Malone— the commander had also inadver- 
tently hinted the object of his being in that neighborhood, and 
actually employed one of the inhabitants to inform him, should I 
again appgar there— but the person being faithful to his country, to 
prevent any mischief happening to me, communicated the intelli- 
gence to one of the Rangers, and sent also the news to Plattsburg, 
which I had not received. It was supposed, at the time, that the 
scouts were then in my front, and to avoid coming in contact with 
them, I lost no time in procuring a hunter or woodsman, as he 
styled himself, for a guide. With him and my waiter I took a 
pathless route through a dreary wilderness, and at night, like a 
true son of the forest, made my lodging beside a log, with my 
cloak for my covering, and my valise for a pillow. N'ext day, by 
ten o'clock, I was beyond reach of those who sought my life. 
From the French Mills I sent a confidential agent to Prescott, to 
obtain information of the movements of the enemy. I then 
discovered, as I supposed, one of the enemy's emissaries, but on 
examination I found he was, more or less, connected with one of 
our Rangers. I exhorted him to be faithful or his life would be 



244 THE LOST PRINCE, 

forfeited. I went to Malone and back to the French Mills. The 
British agents were temporizing with our Indians. Capt. David 
Irwin, who commands the post at the French Mills, does what he 
can to keep the Indians faithful to the United Stales. They are 
fed, and draw rations from the post, an arrangement which I had 
much difficulty to effect in 1812, with the government, but finally 
accomplished it, with the assistance of Gens. Dearborn, Mooers, 
and Tompkins. 

" On my return from the west, I found Gen. Hampton and 
his army at Chautegay. As the duty assigned me rendered it 
necessary that I should be at Plattsburg, at a certain time, I left 
him, having received orders to join him in four days. 

" At Robinson's Inn, within twelve miles from Plattsburg, one of 
the Rangers reported to me that. Gen. Hampton had already made 
demonstration of entering Canada, at Ohamplain, but that bis 
movements were yet a subject of mystery to the enemy, who 
watched him, and that in anticipation of his entering somewhere 
at the west into the province. Sir George Provost was throwing 
his forces into St. Louis, on the south side of the St. Lawrence, 
and that the Canadian militia were called out in mass, to oppose 
the American army — that the Indians were not to be relied on by 
the British, though Sir John Johnson had lately held a council 
with them, and exhorted them to be faithful to His Majesty's 
cause, and co-operate with their forces against the common 
enemy. I have information as to the strength of the regular 
troops at Montreal and La Prairie. I communicated the news to 
Gen. Hampton. On account of duty I was not able to join him 
till 10th October. The St. Regis Indians were in his army on 
20th August, had been ordered to be in readiness to serve the 
government. On 25th, it was reported to him that they were 
under arms, and ready to march to meet the enemy. 

Capt. Irwin, of the F. Mills, opposed the requisition of the Gene- 
ral, on the ground th?it the government did not wish them to inter- 
fere in the contest, but was strong enough to handle the enemy 
herself. She wished them to stay at home in peace, and protect 
their wives and children, and she would feed them. But it was 
overruled. The plea was retaliation. The British had employed 
the Indians in the west, and their cruelties called for vengeance ; 
besides, the friendly part of the St. Regis Indians were anxious to 
co-operate with the American army. "When this subject was 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 245 

brought before me, my situation was delicate in the extreme, as I 
knew the sentiments of the government in 1812, and had no inti- 
mation of any change. Gen. Hampton had given me no informa- 
tion of his intentions to arm the Indians. I immediately made 
inquiry of Gov. Tompkins and the war department. The answers 
put an end to my anxiety. The Indians were permitted to co- 
operate with the American army, and did so as scouts. On the 
mme day, 19 Oct., as before stated, I found the General. It was 
reported there was a detachment of the enemy at Cornwall, ready 
to fall upon his rear, which the enemy could do within thirty-six 
hours. To ascertain the truth I was despatched, on the 20th, 
towards St. Regis, and an officer to another part. The General 
Intends to enter into Canada once more. I perceive he regrets that 
he did not enter Canada by -way of La Cole and La Arcadia, as he 
was recommended by this department. He little imderstands the 
many difficulties he will encounter. He sees now" the obstacles 
which were formerly represented to him, by the route he is now 
taking. He appears to have little reliance on the discipline and 
perseverance of his troops. On my return to the Four Corners, on 
the 26th, a note was handed me from the General, requesting me 
to join him without delay ; so, after having obtained fresh horses, I 
proceeded with all speed in search of him. On my arrival at head- 
quarters, I found there had been a sharp skirmish between his 
advanced corps and the enemy. About this time a council of war 
was held, where several communications were presented to the 
council for their consideration, which eventuated in the falling back 
of the array to its former position. The disclosures were somewhat 
extraordinary, from the tone and temper of the commanders tow^ards 
each other. There was great discord in their views with regard to 
their military operations, which was higlily detrimental to the pub- 
lic service. In the close of the day succeeding that on which I 
joined the army, I was informed that an express had just come in 
from the west, and it was not long before I was requested to 
appear before the General. After an hour's conference, I left him, 
to meet Gen. Wilkinson, according to his orders, at Morristown and 
Ogdensburg. For this purpose, at 11 o'clock at night I left the 
camp with a dragoon and my waiter. On the 6th Nov. I met Gen. 
Wilkinson and his army above Ogdensburg, by whose orders I 
returned the same day down the river as far as St. Regis. Some of 
those Indians who had put themselves under the protection of the 



246 THE LOST PRINCE. 

United States, were employed by him to act as pilots to his numerous 
boats, on their passage down the Long Sault Kapids, and by whose 
guidance not a single boat miscarried. Mr. "W. Gray, the interpreter, 
aided me in this matter and came up with them. On the 10th 
instant, at night, I returned to the Long Sault, and so on, and, early 
the next morning, had an interview with the General, who was at 
this time confined to his barge, by indisposition. Just at the close 
of the conference the cannonading commenced between the British 
and American gun-boats, upon which, after receiving his instruction, 
I retired. The battle of Chrystlers Farm, as it is called, soon after 
commenced on the opposite shore. The sight was grand as well as 
terrific. The cannonading on the water, and the musketry on land 
was kept up for a time with great spirit and resolution on both 
sides. 

" Agreeably to my instruction I hastened to Plattsburg, and took 
the French Mills on my way, where I remained time enough to 
complete certain arrangements which were necessary to be made for 
the benefit of the St. Eegis Indians. 

" On my arrival at Plattsburg I found the place was already occu- 
pied by a portion of the Northern army. 

" Plattsburg^ Nov. 29. — I have made an arrangement with Gen. 
Mooers, in relation to ray department, and I am preparing once 
more to cross the Lake, for my old quarters at Charlotte. The 
enemy is rejoicing to see that our armies are going into winter-quar- 
ters. Peace be with him. 

" Charlotte^ Dec. 2. — I am informed by several ofiicers to-day, from 
Wilkinson's army, that Ool. N. Pinkney was sent to arrest Gen. 
Hampton, but timely information was given him by a confiden- 
tial friend, at the French Mills, which enabled him to elude the 
above officer. The moment, as it were, he received the intelligence, 
he resolved to decamp, and, fortunately for him, a steamer had just 
come into the port, which, without delay, he pressed into the public 
service, and was soon on his way for Whitehall. Thus, he escaped 
from being arrested, his sword taken from him, and the northern 
climate which, it is said (as a southern man), he dreads more than 
the enemy . 

" The General is a gentleman of warm temperament, on account 
of which, he may have sometimes given unnecessary offence to those 
who have a jaundiced eye upon his private acts and military opera- 
tions. He has, undoubtedly, erred in the latter, and this, not from 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 247 

the heart, but in judgment, and for adhering too much to igno- 
rant and evil advisers, but he is a brave and good officer, who sin- 
cerely wishes to sustain the honor of his country. May his noble 
son (who is acting as his aide-de-camp), imitate his honored father, 
in his patriotism. 

" Charlotte^ Dec. 4. — The cold weather has commenced with all 
its severity, in this northern climate. My health is extremely feeble 
— this, I trust, is for my good — it reminds me of the uncertainty of 
my existence here — and, oh, that I may improve my time in prepa- 
ration for the world to come. O merciful God, fit and prepare me 
for death and judgment. My father and brother are with me here 
— Col. Williams has just returned from his command, at the Lines, 
several oflficers are with him. 

" Charlotte^ Dec. 8. — I have been at Burlington, and met with 
one of our Rangers, and I have his report, which is so important 
that I have communicated it to the war department, and partially to 
the commanding officer at Burlington, who will communicate the 
same to the officer at Plattsburg. I have received a letter from 
Judge Ford of Ogdensburgh, who makes certain inquiries of me, about 
which I am unable, at present, to give him information. I have 
received also a letter from Mr. Hastings at the French Mills, in rela- 
tion to the rations issued by him. I shall write to the Commissary- 
General. 

" Charlotte.^ Dec. 11. — I have written to Mr. Hastings to delay his 
determination until I can hear from the commissariat department. 

" CTiarlotte^ Dec. 14. — I am requested by Gov. Tompkins to repair 
to Albany, and shall go thither as soon as my present engagements 
permit. Captain MclSreil, of the 11th Regt., and Col. Fassett called 
upon me, and had a pleasant interview. 

" Charlotte., Dec. 15. — I am requested by the commanding officer 
at Plattsburg, and Gen. Mooers, to visit that post without delay. I 
start to-day, although I am somewhat feeble, yet the urgency of the 
request impels me to go. 

'■'■Plattsburg., Dec. 17. — Had an interview with the commanding 
officer, in presence of Gen. Mooers and Mr. Sailly. The object of ray 
call was arranged, and I hope it will be beneficial to the public 
service. 

" Charlotte., Dec. 18. — Just returned from Plattsburg. I am 
greatly fatigued, and have suffered much from the cold, being on 
horseback. My waiter is sick. My father. Col Williams, and Major 



248 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Stone, are in high spirits — they have "been out on a chase, and killed 
two foxes. There is to be a ball this evening, I am invited to attend 
— but no ! My Bible shall be my company this evening, and may 
God give me a heart to understand His holy word. 

" GJiarlotte^ Dec. 11 — I intend to start for Albany to-morrow 
morning in a stage. How many things at present come in my way, 
which disturb my feelings, in my religious meditations. Much of 
it is, perhaps, my own fault, that my communion with my Heavenly 
Father is not so close as it might be. O, how sweet it is when I 
am with Him by prayer and in reading His holy word. Come, thou 
Holy Spirit, take possession of my soul, kindle there Thy sacred fire 
■ — warm my cold heart — stir me up to devote my whole self, and all 
my time and talents to the glory of my God and Saviour. Sanctify 
my heart by Thy divine influence, and make me a true child of God. 

my God I once more give up myself to Thee, and wilt thou accept 
of me, unworthy as I am, but for Christ's sake have mercy upon me 
and mine in the Saviour. 

" I had a long conversation with my father upon religion, this 
evening — it was pleasant to me. 

'•''Albany^ Decemher 23, 1813. — I arrived here greatly fatigued. 

1 had a pleasant interview with the Rev. Mr. Clowes. Our con- 
versation was much upon the church, its discipline, and govern- 
ment. Lieutenant-Governor Taylor came in the course of the even- 
ing, and was somewhat urgent upon me to attach myself to the 
Episcopal Church. 

" AWany.^ Deceiiiher 24. — I had an interview with Governor 
Tompkins, who had received communications from the War Depart- 
ment, in relation to my corps, which were flattering to ray depart- 
ment, and urging its continuance. But this is uncertain, as the 
corps complain for want of more pay, and I have not been able to 
give them a satisfactory answer. It is a wonder thus far that they 
have not been caught by the enemy — their life is in their own 
hands. They know their fate, if taken. 

'"''Albany., December 25. — I heard a Christmas discourse from the 
Rev. Mr. Clowes — it was an excellent sermon — took a Christmas 
dinner with Lieutenant-Governor Taylor. In the evening went 
to Mr. "Walsh's, and spent the evening pleasantly with a small 
party. 

^'•December 80. — I had an interview with the Commander-in- 
chief, and several officers. 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 249 

" Decemler 31. — Made my report as I received it from the Ran- 
gers. In the evening, Governor Tompkins revealed to me the 
intentions of the government, either to attack Prescot or Montreal, 
TJiere was a long discussion on this delicate point. By the reports 
of the Rangers, Prescot was a strong fortress, and to succeed in 
taking it there must be a regular siege, perhaps, it will take ten or 
fifteen days ; whereas, Montreal was much weaker, and it being the 
second city in the lower province, if conquered, would redound 
more to the honor of the American arms, than the conquest of 
Prescot. It was left to the Commander-in-chief of the New York 
forces to make his choice in regard to an attack. 

'-'- December 31.— I am to start for Plattsburg this afternoon. 

^'- Burlington, January 3, 1814.— Reached here this eveniflg, 
greatly fatigued from the roughness of the roads and the cold I 
experienced on the way. I have great reason to bless God that I 
am still in the land of the living, and see the commencement of 
another year. May I live a new year unto righteousness. 

^'- January 4,. — Had an interview with the commandant of the 
post, who appeared to be alarmed at the movements of the enemj-, 
on the lines. But, by the reports of the Ranger, who met me here, 
I learn that the detachment hovering on the lines is a corps of 
observation. 

" Plattsburg, January 6.— Several of the Rangers have come in, 
whose reports are not worth observation. The enemy is strength- 
ening his fortress at the Isle Aux Noix; forty -five Indians are 
encamped in the neighborhood. 

^'Plattsburg, January 8. — The troops here are at their ease. 
They have now good quarters. Colonel Smith commands the post. 

''- Plattsburg, January 13. — I had an interview with General 
Mooers. I have received an important communication from the 
Department of War, which impells me to repair to the French 
Mills. 

''French Mills, January 15.— General Wilkinson's army have 
occupied this post, a portion of which have already moved to 
Malone, and others will soon follow them. This was an unfortu- 
nate campaign. For a southern man to be put at the head of the 
northern army, is considered by the public prints to be one among 
the many errors that the present administration have committed. 
To put this army, on the 1st November, in motion for a campaign, 
was preposterous beyond calculation. The Secretary of War, on 

11* 



250 THE LOST PRINCE. 

his visit to Sacketts Harbor, was duly apprized of this — but no 
attention was paid to the representations of my department. The 
hints I have received, that the remarks made upon them were, that 
government was determined to commence the campaign — as its 
army was organized, and its transportation was ready — and more, 
it must; In vain, the lateness of the season was represented, and 
the difficulty of conveying such an army down the St. Lawrence, 
on account of the many and dangerous rapids it had to pass. It 
was apprehended that by these and the climate, more men 
would be destroyed than by the sword of the enemy — as was the 
case in Bonaparte's campaign to Kussia. As was expected by 
this department, the campaign ended without accomplishing its 
object. 

" Flattsburg^ Jany. 20. — By the request of Gen. Wilkinson, the 
fortress at Isle Aux llToix, is more closely to be examined, and its 
strength ascertained. In accordance with this, I have issued my 
orders to the Kangers — also the Stone Mill, on the river La Cole, 
which the enemy occupied as a guard-house, is to be examined. 

" Plattsburg^ Jany. 24. — Although I am in the midst of the din 
of war, yet I do not forget my duty to my God. This day has 
been consecrated by me as a day of humiliation, fasting, and 
prayer, for my sins of omission and commission. It has been a 
blessed day with me — what can be more happy to a sinful creature 
than a close communion with God? I have found one officer only 
who can and does pray — he spent the evening with me in prayer 
and praise to Almighty God, for his merciful care of us, and the 
religious privileges that we enjoyed. All sorts and conditions of 
men were remembered. 

'''' Plattsburg^ Jany. 26. — Eeceived a letter from Col. Brady, at 
Sacketts Harbor, who distrusts the fidelity of the St. Regis 
Indians to this government — I have referred him for his satisfac- 
tion to the commandant of the post at French Mills. I am not 
aware of the cause of his mistrust, but it shall be attended to, and 
I have hinted it to the Commissary Hastings, at the place. 

" February 4. — By the orders of the General, I am to repair to 
Burlington — thence to S wanton Falls, and approach Mississiquoi 
Bay, as far as it may be practicable and safe to my person. 

''''February 8, Grand Isle. — I have thus far returned from a 
jaunt of observation — passed last midnight at Aburgh, where we 
were fired upon, but received no injury from it. Our horses 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 251 

suffered much, as they were pushed at a great rate on the ice, to 
avoid our being overhauled by the enemy's dragoons. We were 
too fleet for them, as we had the start. 

" Plattsburg^ February 9. — Made my report to the General, who 
was satisfied. I perceived, in this interview, he intends to invade 
Canada this winter. 

" PlaUsburg^ February 13. — There was a council of war. Gen. 
Mooers was requested to attend. I was called upon to make cer- 
tain statements, which I did. The council were divided. Invasion 
of Canada was the subject of this discussion. Three routes were 
pointed out to the council. It was finally concluded, to attack the 
Stone Mill on river La Cole. 

" Plattsburg^ February 27. — I was called by the secretary of war 
to state the strength of the fortress at Isle Aux Noix, and the 
practicability of its being forced if an attack was made immediately, 
and when the information is obtained to communicate the same to 
General Wilkinson. The information desired was soon obtained — 
although the strength of that fortress was well known before — yet 
in compliance with the requisition of the war department, 
re-examination was made, and further information gained as to the 
force of the enemy at that place — St. Johns, Ohambly, La Prairie, 
and Montreal. On the occasion, one of the Eangers was taken 
upon suspicion of the object of his visit, but, fortunately for 
him, escaped. 

^'- Plattsburg, March 5. — A partial report was made to the 
General. By this he was sure of his game. Many detachments 
had been preparing for some days for an expedition. 

'•'• March the 6th. — The final report was made of the information 
received of the Eangers. There was a discussion between the 
General and myself, as to the expediency of the immediate attack 
of the aforementioned fortress. The General was referred to the 
reports, and, at the same time, reminded of the diflSculties and 
obstacles he and his army might encounter should he attempt it. 
He contemplated an attack upon the Stone Mill, whose walls were 
strong, and would resist the six pounders he intended to take — so, 
to succeed, it would be necessary for him to take several pieces of 
heavier calibre, say, eighteen and twenty-four pounders to batter 
down the walls of the Mill, and those pieces of ordnance ought to 
be mounted upon sleds, to make it easy for their transportation, 
and to have their carriages accompanying them, and used when 



252 THE LOST, PRINCE. 

necessary. To this the General remarked, that he had ordered 
one eighteen pounder on a carriage, and several field pieces to 
accompany the detachment. He was again reminded, that if suc- 
cessful in his intended attack upon the Stone Mill, as he would be 
then in the neighborhood of Isle Aux Noix, it was presumed, his 
next attack would be upon that fortress — and if so, it was of the 
greatest importance to his success there, that his fire of artillery 
should be superior to the enemy. The fort must be destroyed by 
his artillery, as it would be preposterous to attempt to take it by 
storming, since it was doubly fortified at present — as the fort 
stands on the island, and care is taken every day that the ice is 
broken, and moved for thirty feet all round the island, and this 
must be surmounted before the ramparts of the fort can be reached 
and attacked. Its ramparts are well protected by heavy guns and 
three small batteries. The General appeared to be somewhat dis- 
concerted with the first obstacle, viz, the water all round the fort. 

" It was again represented, if a regular siege was intended upon 
that fort, he would meet many difiiculties — and that if the place 
was not taken by the point of the bayonet, it must be by a heavy 
cannonading — to raise redoubts, at present, for his heavy jjieces, 
would be a great labor, as the ground was then in a frozen state. 
But the General could not see there were any hi'nderances to his 
intended invasion. The honor of the army must be retrieved. 

'•''Plattsburg, March 7.— To-day I communicated to the War Depart- 
ment the hints which were given to General Wilkinson, and one, in 
short, to Governor Tompkins. I am happy to find that General 
Mooers' sentiments coincide entirely with mine, in every point 
which was suggested to General AVilkinson. If I am not mistaken, 
the General will find there were some truths in the friendly sug- 
gestions made to him. 

'■'■ Flattshurg, March 8. — I am indisposed to-day, and as this 
indisposition has been increasing for more than two months, I have 
concluded to visit Dr. Pomeroy, at Burlington. 

" Burlington, 28. — I am now convalescent, my nerves have been 
deeply afiected by a cold I took at Plattsburg. My nervous system 
is in a feeble state, and my eyes are so weak that I am unable to 
read. Grant, merciful God, that this sickness may have the efi'ect 
of weaning me from the world, and bringing me in deep humility 
and repentance to thee. Restore, O Lord, my health to me, and 
may my future life be devoted to thy glory. My friends from 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 253 

Charlotte have been kind and attentive. The Rev. Mr. Haskell, of 
that place, has been attentive as a good pastor. I bless God for 
his goodness and loving-kindness to me, his unworthy creature. 

" Burlington^ April 3. — I have watched, with intense anxiety, 
all the movements of General Wilkinson. He failed in his adven- 
ture of the Stone Mill, at the river La Cole. Without a military 
eye, and due preparation in the artillery, &c., it could not be other- 
wise than a defeat. They had a sufficient force in the field to have 
taken the Mill, at least, but were discomfitted and compelled to 
retreat before an inferior number of the enemy. Much praise is 
due to Major Hancock, of the British, for his noble defence of the 
post assigned him. This is the second disgrace General Wilkinson 
has brought on the American arms. If court-marshalled, he would 
not escape from being cashiered. The government may assist to 
screen him from a public censure. 

^'' Plattsburg^ April 12.— General Izard, I understand, is to 
assume the command of the northern army ; a goodly number of 
troops are here. Saw General Mooers but a few minutes. I am to 
call upon him to-morrow. 

" Plattsburg, 29.— I have been on the lines, by the request of 
the commandant of the post. I have been absent six days. I moved 

much with the movements of the enemy. Sent despatches to , 

confidential in their nature. 

" Plattsburg, May 4. — I have been indisposed for a considerable 
time, yet I am able to perform my duties. 

^^ May 13. — Had an interview with General Izard, and was 
pleased to learn from him that he would rely on any information 
that may be communicated to him from my department. The 
Ranger was introduced to him, whom he exhorted to be faithful 
to his duty. 

" Plattsburg^ May 16. — Dined with General Mooers, Judge Mor©, 
General Woolsey, and Mr. Sailly. There was a long discussion 
among the gentlemen, of the past military operations on these 
frontiers. 

" These gentlemen are my confidential friends, and much pjrdse 
is due to them for their patriotism to their country. They were 
of great service to me, on various occasions, and in some instances 
their advice was of the greatest importance to my department. 

" Plattsburg^ May 20. — The same gentlemen mentioned on the 
16th, met me at the house of General Woolsey, and half the day 



254 THE LOST PRINCE. 

was spent in discussion upon the future military operations on these 
frontiers. With my approbation, a long document was produced 
and read, showing the present commander of the northern army 
his course, and the only one which was considered to be feasible for 
him to pursue, in order to his success over the enemy. I must 
confess the document was an admirable one, and well calculated to 
call the attention of the General to many important points which 
were suggested therein. I readily concluded it was the united opi- 
nion of the gentlemen present, as they highly recommended the 
sentiments and suggestions expressed in the document ; I myself 
"joined with them in the propriety of adhering to it. It was 
finally hinted, whether I did not think it would be for the good of 
the public service, and the honor of the American arms, to present the 
same to Gen. Izard, for his inspection and consideration. I replied, 
' Gentlemen, you are northern men. You have critically observed 
the movements of the former disastrous campaigns. You have 
seen with pain the great faults that were committed by those to 
whom the American armies were intrusted. Your patriotism to 
your country and anxiety to sustain her honor, has led you to sug- 
gest many important points which may prove to be of great service 
to the General. The document not only reveals the errors that 
were committed by the former commanders, but most judiciously 
points out the course that may be pursued by the present commander, 
in order to his success. I shall with pleasure present the paper to 
General Izard, if I am permitted to do so. I presume, gentlemen, 
he will duly appreciate its contents, and he may be benefited by 
them.' 

" The document was presented at a proper time. 

" May 26. — I was called upon by the General, in relation to the 
paper which I had presented him, with which he was pleased. 

" Plattsburg^ June 3. — There is a report that General Izard will 
move a portion of his army to Chazy or Champlain. I have no 
intimation of the kind, as yet, from him. 

" June 8. — I have forwarded a certain communication to the war ^ 
department, which is confidential in its import. 

'-'' June 12. — I have received a communication from Governor 
Tompkins, asking for an information in relation to the St. Eegis 
Indians, I perceive an attempt is made to stop the rations which 
have been issued to them by the General Government. The 
Governor is friendly to them. I called upon Gen. Mooers and Mr. 



THE WAR JOtJRNAL. 255 

Sailly, to sustain me in this matter, and they have done it to my 
satisfaction. 

" June 14. — Commissary Hastings, from the post at the French 
Mills, called ujjon me this afternoon, who is somewhat alarmed lest 
his issuing the rations to the Indians should be discontinued by the 
government. He was infoitned, that an exertion was making for 
its continuance. I advised him to repair to Albany, and have an 
interview with the general of the commissariat department, whom 
I addressed once more upon the subject. Mr. Hastings has gone 
to Albany. 

" June 21. — Some of the St. Eegis Indians came in yesterday. 
The intelligence they have communicated is somewhat exaggerated. 
The enemy is, no doubt, active in his preparation, either for the 
invasion or self-defence. 

" The gun-boat, on the Lake of St. Francis, is somewhat trouble- 
some to the American inhabitants on the shores of the St. 
Lawrence. This department has recommended its being taken or 
destroyed. It is now, as I understand, in preparation of being 
effected. The volunteers from the post at the French Mills, may be 
drafted for this expedition. One of the lieutenants from the navy 
of Lake Ohamplain, will be put at the head of the detachment. I 
have had several interviews with the Commodore McDonough 
upon the subject, who approves the plan. May the expedition be 
as successful as Major Young was upon St. Regis, in 1812. 

" Plattsburg^ July 4. — This has been a festival day with the 
citizens here. I dined with them ; Capt. Sperry, appeared conspicuous 
on the occasion. Mr. Sailly, of the revenue department, delivered a 
handsome and eloquent speech at the table, which was highly 
applauded. He is a French gentleman of great respectability. 

" July 10. — I am preparing to visit the lines. Three Indians are 
to accompany me. 

'•''Evening. — I visited the American camp at Chazy, and was 
treated politely by the officers — passed to Mooerstown, and am 
now lodging in the woods or wilderness. Here I met a certain 
messenger, and received from him despatches, and obtained from 
him many particulars of the movements of the enemy, &c., 
among others, that they are daily expecting to receive reinforce- 
ment from Europe, as Bonaparte has ceased to be a terror to the 
European powers, so that the troops can now be spared from the 
continental service. Thus we may now expect to contend with 



256 THE LOST PKIKCE. 

the Duke of Wellington's heroes — but the American army is now, 
in a measure, organized, and they will meet them, as they did in 
the Revolutionary War. There will be hard battles fought this 
season on these frontiers. The army is now in fine order, and 
eager to meet the enemy. 

'•''July 20. — A communication hasl^een presented to me from 
Gen. Izard, which has greatly disturbed my feelings. I immedi- 
ately sent to the General, requesting him, to have the goodness to 
give me the name of the author, or he might be seized under the 
martial-law, and have him sent to me for investigation of his 
reports. I asked this favor of the General, as I considered the 
subject came within my department. 

" July 23. — Gen. Izard was pleased to send the person, under 
the guard of two dragoons. The paper was placed before hira 
which he had presented to the General. He was mute, and his 
eyes fixed upon the paper. He was questioned, but no reply. He 
was told tliat his life and death was in his own hands, as there was 
a strong suspicion of what he was, and who employed him — that 
although by the military law of this government, he was exposed 
to death, if convicted of what is charged upon hira, or what he 
is supposed to be ; but if he would candidly confess and declare 
his object in making such representations as he does in the paper 
before him, he may hope for mercy. 

" He saw his escape was hopeless, and to save himself, there were 
disclosures made of the intrigues of the enemy with the American 
citizens on the lines, which astonished this department. Certain 
officers, in the Indian department, are seeking to seize my person, 
&c. The disclosures made, just stated, are seasonable and important 
at this period of the war. The plan of the enemy, had it been 
effected, would have been most mischievous to the military opera- 
tions of the northern army, but the discovery was so important, it 
compelled me to have an interview with the General, which lasted 
about two hours. It was a delicate and difficult subject — although 
his case was remediless in the view of martial law — yet mercy pre- 
vailed, for several important reasons it was concluded it would be 
most politic and conducive to the American cause, to dismiss,- as 
easily and as silently as possible, the person in question. He was, 
therefore, permitted to depart, after receiving from him a pledge to 
be at peace — with a strong caution, from this department, to be quiet 
and withhold his hands from the concerns of the war. Names were 



THE WAR JOURNAL. • 257 

obtained of the American citizens (some of these were smugglers 
from Massachusetts), who were actually in league with the enemy 
— conveying to them secret intelligence of our position and strength. 
In consequence of the foregoing, I immediately issued an order to 
the whole corps of the Rangers to have a watchful eye upon the 
persons named in the order. Names also were obtained of the 
enemy's secret agents in Canada — they were to be looked after, and 
taken if they were found within the American lines. 

" July 25. — I am much indisposed in consequence of the warm 
weather we now experience. Commodore Macdonough called upon 
me for information (if in my power), of the naval force of the enemy 
at Isle aux Noix^ which I was not able to give him. 

" I have been just informed that some troops have arrived at Que- 
bec, from Europe, but the report, however, is somewhat vague. 

'■'•July 30 — Dr. Moore has been with me for this three days past, 
being so much indisposed. I am, however, somewhat better to-day. 
The General and some of his officers have called upon me, and very 
kindly tendered their services, for which they have my sincere 
thanks. 

" Plattslurg^ August 3. — By the Rangers, the enemy's largest ship 
is in a fair way to be soon completed. I have reported this to Com- 
modore Macdonough. Mr. Macdonough is the only navy officer, I 
have found who appears to be pious, and attends upon the divine 
institutions. 

^''August 9. — There is a report that General Izard is soon to move 
with a portion of the northern army to the Niagara frontier ; if so, 
this will be another blunder of the present administration. I have 
sent one of the Rangers to Gen. Izard according to his request. 

" August 10. — I have ascertained to-day that a portion of the 
northern army is to move to the Niagara frontier, to fill up the loss 
which Gen. Brown had sustained at Chippeway and Lundy's Lane. 

'■'■August 13. — I have received communication from the war 
department through Governor Tompkins, in which I find that the 
determination of the government in the removal of the northern 
army from this quarter, is a most extraordinary step in the military 
policy. It is well known that the enemy is receiving reinforcements 
from Europe. Already it is believed there is a considerable force 
in the vicinity of Montreal. If our army is withdrawn from this 
post, the enemy may invade this section of the country and ^ttack 
Plattsburg. 



258 • THE LOST PRINCE. 

" August 14. — The General has communicated to me, that it is 
the final order of the government for his taking a line of march for 
Saoketts Harbor — thence on board of the fleet for Niagara. 

" Now, this is most impolitic, as well as contrary to the military 
tactics, to leave such an important post as Plattsburg, just at this 
time, where the government has everything here to sustain the cam- 
paign. Artillery of various calibre, abundance of munition of war, 
provisions and arms for ten thousand men, YOO batteaux complete 
for use, and a navy ready for action. I am somewhat disheartened 
with the manoeuvres, and errors of the government. Commodore 
Macdonough is greatly chagrined at the intentions of the government 
in regard to this matter. 

" August 15. — In the warmth of my feelings to sustain the Ame- 
rican flag, I have addressed the war department, through Governor 
Tompkins, in which I respectfully remonstrated against the policy of 
the government, in withdrawing the troops from this quarter, and 
forewarned them that the enemy may besiege Plattsburg. 

" August 16. — As I have anticipated, so I am informed that the 
British are now assembling theii- troops at La Prairie and La Acadia 
plains, and that their object is for the invasion of the State of New 
York. 

" August 18. — The northern army is now in motion to the place 
of its destination. I remarked to the General, that I feared, that by 
this move of the government, they were taking from him ail the 
glory of beating the enemy^ — with this he appeared to be greatly 
moved — and remarked, he was a soldier, and must obey his superiors ; 
but he observed, with a placid smile on his countenance, ' Friend 
Williams, you ought to be at the head of the war department, instead 
of those who now control the army,' 

" August 19. — General Macombe will be left with one thousand 
five hundred men to protect and defend this important post, I had 
a long interview with him. I did not wish to alarm him, but hinted 
that his post may be in danger of an attack from the enemy. He 
thought there was but little danger of this, especially when the enemy 
shall be informed of General Izard's march for the west, and if they 
had any troops to spare from Montreal, they will send them up to 
oppose him on the Niagara frontier. 

. " Thus ended my first interview with him as a Commander-in-chief 
of th^ post at Plattsburg. 

" August 21. — General Macombe called upon me this morning to 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 259 

ascertain the truth of what he had learned from some of the Ame- 
rican merchants, who were retiring from Canada, tinder the procla- 
mation of the Governor-general, Sir George Provost. ' I wish to 
know, sir,' said he, 'from your department, as to the truth of the 
information which I, last evening, received from several Americans 
from Canada — that the enemy is in force at La Prairie and La Acadia 
plains.' I stated to the General that I was in possession of the same 
information— as to their numbers, I was unable to say — but that from 
the Eangers I was daily and hourly expecting to hear and learn on 
this point, and when I did he would be informed ; with this he 
retired.' 

" August 22.— At 3 o'clock, P.M., a Ranger arrived, and the intel- 
ligence he brought was immediately communicated to the General, 
which was somewhat alarming in its import. 

" August 23.— At 2 o'clock, P.M., General Maconibe called upon 
me, and appeared to be somewhat in agitation. ' I wish, sir,' said 
he, ' to be informed more correctly as to the truth, which was com- 
municated to me, yesterday, of the enemy's force at La Prairie and 
La Acadia plains,' and with strong emphasis, added, 'if your 
department needs any money to obtain correct information required, 
please to make your requisition for the sum upon the deputy-quar- 
ter-master-general.' I took the hint of the General's expression. 
I retorted upon him, ' General, the department does not require an 
extra sum to obtain the information desired. The reports made by 
this department have always been correct, so it shall be now. Espe- 
cial order shall be issued, to-day, to the Rangers for more activity 
and vigilance, and for a further information.' 

'"'■August 24. — This morning I had an interview with General 
Macombe and Commodore Macdonough. I am to start for the lines, 
this afternoon, to be accompanied by one of the officers of the navy, 
in a citizen's dress. The General, as I understand, has ordered the 
whole garrison to labor upon the forts for their completion. 

^'■August 25. — I have just returned from Champlain (now, two 
o'clock at night), where I arrived last night at twelve o'clock, and 
there met some of the Rangers, and the information received from 
them, is in corroboration of that which had been received from other 
sources, of the force of the enemy and their destination, viz. Platts- 
burg. On my arrival I had an interview with the General, who, I 
perceive, has decided to make an effort to defend the post. To- 



260 THE LOST PRINCE. 

morrow a council of war is to be holden, and General Mooers is 
invited to attend. 

''''August 26. — A council of war was held to-day. My depart- 
ment was called upon for information of the strength of the enemy 
and its intentions, as far as it was known. The information being 
given, the council was satisfied on this point, for it could not be 
otherwise, that the enemy was gradually advancing towards the 
lines, that his intentions were to invade the State of New York, 
and that Plattsburg was his object. General Mooers was requested* 
to call out the militia en masse, and to invite the Vermonters to assist 
in the defence of Plattsburg, and the patriotic citizens to aid in com- 
pleting the forts. There is, at present, a general alarm among the 
citizens of the place, and the inhabitants in this vicinity, of the 
expected invasion of the enemy. Some have already began to leave 
the village, taking their efiects with them. It is not only melan- 
choly, but distressing, to see the poor taking their all upon their 
backs, and flying from their peaceful abodes, and seeking an asylum 
in places where they are unknown. 

" August 27. — The anxiety of the General is now so great at the 
movements of the enemy, as to require me for a report once in ten 
hours. I sent one of the Eangers to the lines, who has just 
returned. He took a view, as he said, of the enemy's fleet, and 
ascertained, as near as it was possible, the calibre of his guns. 
This requisition was made by Commodore McDonough's request. 
He took one of the government horses, with permission to sell it to 
the enemy, to cover his visit. 

" At 4t o'clock^ P. M. — A Ranger has just arrived with an impor- 
tant information, with whicli I immediately repaired to the 
General's quarters — who, I found was marching with his men, 
with a heavy pine stick on his shoulders, which had painted him 
with its black coat, so that I could scarcely know him. Every 
department is now all in activity. Several redoubts are raised as 
batteries. The inhabitants are flying from their homes. 

" August 28. — A great anxiety now prevails among us all. Gen. 
Mooers and his staff are in the field. A Eanger has come in, who 
has been in the enemy's camp for four days — he made a close 
observation of his forces — viz. fourteen thousand regulars, most 
of whom were lately from Europe ; two thousand Canadians and 
two hundred Indians ; thirty-six guns, and about one thousand 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 261 

carts. Three thousand of the above troops were thirty-six miles 
above Montreal, on their way into the Upper province. "When the 
news reached Montreal that General Izard had left Plattsburg with 
his army (excepting a heavy guard), on his way to the west, they 
were recalled. 

" Evening^ at Chazy^ 8 o'clock^ P. M. — After an interview with 
Generals Macomb, Mooers, and Commodore McDonough, I placed 
myself upon my horse, with my waiter, and in great haste came 
hither. I saw Judge Treadwell on my way, from whom I 
received a certain intelligence — and met here Judge More, from 
Champlain, and Mr. Ransom, of this place, with whom I consulted 
in regard to our present peculiar and dangerous situation. From 
these intelligent gentlemen I am relieved from the object of my 
present jaunt toward the lines. It would appear that the enemy 
are so confident of their strength and our weakness, they do not 
hesitate to declare openly that Plattsburg was their object. 

" The reports of the Rangers are now more frequent, as they are 
now close to me, and they have nothing else to do but to observe 
the movements of the enemy ; daily, useful information is now 
received from this brave, daring, and active corps. 

" August 29. — The enemy are advancing gradually towards the 
line. Our forts, redoubts, and batteries are almost completed — 
should the enemy attempt to appear before them, no doubt, but 
that they will receive hard blows. 

" As to the naval force of the enemy, we have ascertained it, 
and the calibre of his guns, with which intelligence Commodore 

McDonough is pleased, as he has been somewhat troubled in not 

knowing the metal of the enemy's naval guns. 

" Plattsburg^ Sept. 2 — A portion of the enemy have crossed the 

great territorial line, and are encamped at Champlain. 

" Sept. 3. — The enemy have crossed the Champlain river, and 

are somewhat in advance of the village. The militia, under Gen. 

Mooers, are assembling, and forming an encampment in the rear of 

the forts and at Salmon river. 

" Sept. 4. — The enemy's advance guard is within eighteen miles 

from us. Some of the bold and brave militia-men have exchanged 

shots Mdth them, 

" Sept. 5, — A council of war was held last evening. My depart- 
ment was again called upon to state the force of the enemy. 

Every arrangement was made and settled how to receive him. All 



262 THE LOST PRINCE. 

are in activity — every kind of instrument of death is in preparation, 
and our fleet in the Bay are manoeuvering — the gun-boats are exer- 
cising near the shores, in preparation to annoy the enemy whenever 
he may approach and attack the village. All are solemn — it cannot 
be otherwise, knowing as we do our weakness, and the strength of 
the enemy — ^but resistance will be made, whether to effect or not. 
Gen. Hull's surrender at Detroit, is in their minds, and spoken of by 
the soldiers — they are determined that Plattsburg shall not be 
attacked or surrendered, without the expense of British and Ameri- 
can blood. The word Saratoga is in the mouth of many. 

" Major Aplying, with his Kifle corps, will occupy the bridge, at 
Dead Creek, near Gen. Mooers' house. This corps has already seen 
hard service. 

" At nighty 12 o'clock. — ^I have just returned from Gen. Mooers' 
encampment, at Calwell's Hill. His position is well chosen to 
receive the enemy, who are now at Douglas Place, at the separa- 
tion of the Lake and the Back Eoad, as it is called. It is 
presumed they will advance on both. A small detachment, headed 
by my brother John, have gone to spy out the enemy's encamp- 
ment. 

" At Nighty 5 o'cloc'k. — ^A Kanger has just come in, who left the 
enemy's camp at two o'clock ; and, at that early hour, they were 
in columns, ready to march. I presume they will be upon us to-day. 
Although I am not strictly bound, according to my oflSce, to take 
the carnal weapon into my hand ; yet, connected as I am with the 
army, and all the secret intelligence of the formidable preparations 
of the enemy, for the invasion of the State of ITew York, passing 
through my hands — the feeble state of the American force — ^half a 
million of property of the government at the place — the extensive 
and unfinished works to defend — the distress of the inhabitants, 
who are now deserting their houses — ^the general excitement and 
alarm on the northern frontiers — and the anxiety manifested by the 
commanding officer, are such as to raise my war-spirit. I have been 
even called upon several times during the day and night, for infor- 
mation of the progress and movements of the enemy. I had put 
the whole corps of observers in motion to watch him, who were so 
faithful and daring as to give intelligence from the very centre of 
the enemy's army, in less than thirty hours; the import was 
frightful, that the enemy was fourteen thousand strong, with a for- 
midable train of artillery — fearful odds against the American army 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 263 

of fifteen hundred men. Under these exciting and distressing cir- 
cumstances, and at the same time, with strong but respectful 
request from General McOomb and Mooers for my co-operation, I 
am thus at length under the necessity of putting on my armor and 
buckler, to sustain the honor of the American Government. 

" To repel the invaders, who are now about twelve miles from 
Plattsburg, General Mooers advanced this afternoon with seven 
hundi-ed men to Beckmantown, and, in the evening. Major Wool 
followed, with two hundred and fifty of the regulars. 

*' Evening^ Septeinber 6, at 10 o'clock. — The enemy had been 
making gradual approaches upon Plattsburg, until this morning, he 
made a rapid advance in two columns upon two distinct points, and 
an engagement immediately followed, between Major-General 
Powers' brigade, supported by a demi-brigade of General Eobinson 
and General Mooers, of the New York militia, supported by a 
detachment, under Major Wool, who set the militia an example of 
firmness, for the regulars disputed the road with great obstinacy ; 
but the miHtia could not be prevailed on to stand for any length of 
time, notwithstanding the exertions of their general and staif- 
officers. The State Dragoons, of New York, wore red coats ; and 
they, being on the heights to watch the enemy, gave considerable 
alarm to the militia, who mistook them for the British, and feared 
lest they would be getting in their rear. The field-pieces, how- 
ever, did considerable execution among the enemy's column ; and 
so undaunted were they, that they never deployed in their whole 
march, but continued pressing in close column, with the exception of 
a cloud of skirmishers on their right and left. The field-pieces were, 
finally, ordered to retire across the bridge, and form a battery for 
its protection, and to cover the retreat of the infantry, which was 
accordingly done. It was here, for the first time, I was initiated 
how to manage heavier guns than rifles. The cannonade was kept 
up upon the enemy with great spirit until sunset. This had been 
a day of anxiety and gloominess in the little American army. 
There was no prospect of retaining their position against such 
overwhelming force as that of the enemy. They had been com 
pelled to recede about six miles before such a cloud of skirmishers 
and a heavy column of the enemy, as to impress them with an idea 
of their own weakness, and their inability to withstand the inva- 
ders. This was not only extremely disheartening, but humiliating 
to the American soldiery. General Macomb was silent and 



264 THE LOST PRINCE. 

thoughtful — he saw too much, no doubt, of his dangerous position 
— but the garrisons were committed to him for safe keeping, and 
he would defend them to the last extremity, or be buried under them. 
In the council of war, which was held on the night of the 7th, at 
their recommendation, I concluded to place myself at the head of the 
artillery, with such volunteers as might be collected. The Eanger 
I had sent to ascertain the strength of the enemy's fleet, returned 
at two o'clock ; and I went with him immediately to our fleet. I 
had an interview with Commodore Macdonough. He was pleased 
with the communication, and, no doubt, he will make good use 
of it. At intervals during the day, we have cannonaded at the 
enemy's works, and had skirmishing at the bridge. 

" General Mooers' division are bivouacked at Salmon river. His 
advance-guard extends to Pike's encampment on the Saranac. His 
scouts are vigilant and active ; and there is no corps more useful 
and watchful than the one under the command of Captain Aikens 
and Lieutenant Flagg. All the Rangers are in, excepting two, for 
whose safety I am somewhat anxious. 

" September 8. — The Vermont militia have began to come. Cap- 
tain Farsworth, of St. Albans, with his rifle company, ninety-six 
strong, have just arrived. This is a fine and noble corps. 

" Evening. — Generals Macomb and Mooers, and Commodore 
Macdonough were together this evening, in consultation, the result 
of which is, that I am once more compelled to put the whole corps 
of Rangers in motion. 

" SepteTnb&r 9, Friday. — We again cannonaded at the enemy's 
works. I am quite deaf this evening. A detachment of the 
enemy attempted to cross at the upper-bridge, but were repulsed 
by Captain Yaughan's corps. This corps is one of the finest in 
General Mooers' division. On the 6th, although compelled to 
retreat, yet they did so in good order, and disputed the ground with 
the enemy for five miles. 

" The volunteers from Vermont are now arriving by companie? 
and regiments. Col. Williams, of Charlotte, eight hundred strong, 
landed, this afternoon, at Peru. Several of our men were killed 
and wounded in a skirmish at the lower bridge. By the request 
of Generals Macomb and Mooers, this Department was compelled 
to issue an order to the Rangers, on the 8th inst,, to take an ofiicer 
of the enemy. Accordingly, an ofiicer of the artillery was taken, 
and brought in this evening, and presented to the Generals. 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 265 

" I have just received a note, in reply to mine, from Colonel 
Fasset, commandiDg at Burlington, in which it is proposed to play 
a coup de main upon the British General. Preparations will be 
made to carry this matter into effect. The same have been sub- 
ifiitted to Generals Macomb and Mooers, which was approved. 
The most active and bravest of the Eangers is selected to perform 
this difficult and dangerous duty. He accepts, with cheerfulness, 
the hazardous task. 

" Septemler 10.— Last night, a corps of the regular troops, under 
Captain MacGlassin, about 11 o'clock, crossed the Saranac, and 
stormed, at the point of the bayonet, a bomb-battery of the 
enemy, near Weight's printing office. My brother John was the 
leader of this detachment, and was the cause of the death of the 
engineer of the battery. Having accomplished the duty assigned 
them, they returned to the forts whence they had issued, with 
honor and victory. 

" A rifle company, under Captain Aikens and Lieutenant Flagg 
(composed of the young gentlemen of Plattsburg), are not only 
useful in watching our front line, but they are brave and daring in 
skirmishing with the enemy. Yesterday, three of this noble 
corps came nigh being taken or destroyed by the enemy, viz. 
Allen, Traverse, and Williams. The daring spirits of these young 
warriors carried them beyond prudence. They crossed the river 
Saranac to spy out the enemy, as well as to supply themselves 
with certain articles which they knew were deposited in a barn, 
and the house was not far from it which was occupied by the 
guard of the enemy. Just at the moment they were supplying 
themselves with such articles as they would take, volley after volley 
of musketry was poured upon them, but they fortunately escaped 
uninjured. But it is said that the enemy paid dear for this. The 
youthful band had anticipated this opposition, and were prepared 
to defend their comrades. The whole corps answered the enemy's 
fire with such firmness and precision, as to compel the enemy soon 
to retire. By the report of a Eanger from Grand Isle, we may 
now daily expect to see the enemy's fleet in our bay. Both par- 
ties are preparing for a conflict. The militia from Vermont are 
still coming' in. General Strong and Major Lyman have arrived. 
Their division is encamped at Pike's cantonment. 

" Plattsburg^ Sept. 14. — The British General having made a dis- 
position of his fleet and land forces for a simultaneous attack 

12 



266 THE LOST PRINCE. 

upon the American position, the first gun on the 11th was the 
signal for a general action. Sir George Provost instantly opened 
his heavy batteries upon the works on the opposite bank of the 
Saranac. A tremendous cannonade ensued — terrific was the 
noise of more than two hundred pieces of cannon ; bomb-shells, 
shaapnells, balls, and congreve rockets, were thrown into the 
American lines during the whole day. 

" Our position was in the range with one of the enemy's bat- 
teries, and was placed there to answer it, and to oppose them by 
cannonading should they attempt to ford the river. As it was 
expected, they made the attempt more than once, and at first, by 
two heavy columns, and when they arrived at the brink of the 
river they were saluted with such a storm of shot and grape from 
our battery, as to compel them to fall back, and make their way 
into the houses, shops, barns, and ditches. Thence they kept up a 
heavy fire and contended with our riflemen, who were in two mills 
near the bridge. While the cannonading went on, we either 
answered the enemy's fire, or poured shot into every body of their 
troops, that presented a tolerable mark. ISTever, perhaps, were skir- 
mishes, if such they deserved to be called, conducted with more 
bravery on both sides. If our troops, in this quarter, lacked skill, 
they more than made up by their daring. The result of the 
engagement between the two naval armaments, which continued 
upwards of two hours, ultimately determined the action upon land. 
The plans of the British General were completely frustrated by its 
issue ; the whole of his larger vessels having struck to the United 
States flag; three of the row gallies being destroyed, and the 
remainder escaping from the bay in a shattered condition. The 
annihilation of his fleet being announced to Sir George, he immedi- 
ately withdrew his forces from the assault of the American works. 
From his batteries, however, he kept up a constant fire until the 
dusk of evening, when, being silenced by the guns of the fort and 
the batteries, he retired from the contest, and at nine o'clock at 
night, sent off his artillery, and all the baggage, for which he 
could obtain a transport. At midnight, he made a precipitate 
and disgraceful retreat, leaving behind him all his sick and 
wounded. Towards the close of the day, when the enemy 
appeared to make his last efforts to silence our batteries, I was 
wounded, though not to that degree as to compel me to leave the 
«orps. As soon as it was known, in the morning, that the enemy 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 267 

had retreated, a general order was issued to several divisions and 
detachments, to pursue the enemy. Our corps was ordered to fol- 
low them, and at seven o'clock, we commenced our route for the 
north, under the equinoctial storm. The rain had heen pouring 
down with such torrents during the night, as to put the road into 
such a state as to become almost impassable. It had been passed 
over, during the night, by more than four hundred carts of the 
enemy, besides his battering train of artillery, so that by twelve 
o'clock, our progress had been but eight miles. The cavalry, 
riflemen, and light infantry were several hours in advance, while 
we were thus drudging in a road, with mud sometimes almost up 
to our knees, gun after gun stuck and upset in the quagmires, and 
the horses were staggering and reeling under their burdens. 

"Happily for us, in the midst of these difficulties, orders came for 
us to retrace our steps ; and it was not until after dark that we 
reached the place whence we took our departure in the morning. 
On reaching my marquee, not a thread on me was dry — shivering 
under the north-westerly wind, fatigued, and hungry. My wound 
had now become quite painful, which no care had been taken of, 
more than what had been done by my waiter, who occasionally 
washed it with brandy. The wound was not dangerous in its 
nature, and no inconvenience would have resulted from it, had I 
not taken cold from the heavy showers of rain that fell upon us 
during the night and the following day, to which I was exposed. 
* * ***** 

" The cause for great anxiety had now passed — the enemy had 
retreated — and, although victory was on our side, yet in sober and 
serious reflections, there were grounds and reasons not only for 
painful sensations, but sorrow. Many promising young men had 
met an untimely death. Among them were our friends and 
acquaintances, whom we loved and esteemed, whose exit we 
greatly lamented, and whose dead bodies were still in an exposed 
state. Is this the fate of war ? Were they prepared to die thus ? 
And had I been one of them, what would have been my destiny 
in the future world ? In the midst of these inward interrogations, I 
was interrupted by the appearance of General M'Oomb and Major 
M'Neil, who congratulated me on my safe return, and sympathised 
with me on account of the painful sensations which I was now 
suffering from my wound. After many jovial words, and hearty 
laughs at certain transactions, by some of his oflicers, during the 



268 THE LOST PRINCE. 

siege, the General left me, with promise that I should be imme- 
diately attended to by the medical gentlemen; but this was 
objected to by my father, who would act on the occas^ion as my 
physician, under whose fostering hand I Avas carefully attended, 
and in five weeks I was so far restored as to go abroad once 
more. 

" It was in the hours of my confinement, that I have resolved 
again and again, if God be willing, to carry to the Indians the 
faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that ' Christ Jesus 
came into the world, to save sinners.' How far I am actuated in 
these from holy principles, may I say that as far as I know my own 
heart, my aim is for the glory of God, and the advancement of the 
Kedeemer's kingdom." 

The military life of Mr. "Williams closed with its most brilliant, 
if not its most arduous and trying hour. Entering the service of 
the United States, in the first instance, merely from a sense of duty, 
and without any desire for personal distinction, which allures so 
many into the army, he had fulfilled the part of a noble-minded 
commander and gallant soldier. The nature of his oflSce, though 
responsible in the extreme, and demanding the highest qualifica- 
tions, mental and moral, kept him necessarily in the back ground. 
Though he had the full confidence and esteem of the government 
and high miHtary officers, who rightly estimated his wortli, because 
they reaped the fruits of it in almost every important event of the 
war, the public at large knew little of the wisdom, integrity, forti- 
tude, courage, and moderation, which he had displayed. His 
services were too deep and vital to be blazoned in newspapers or 
recorded in despatches, and would never have come to light but 
for his practice of keeping a journal, from the dawn of boyish 
intelligence, in which, I think, so clearly the hand of Providence 
may be traced. If the war had continued, it is probable, he would 
have been offered the command of a brigade, had he chosen to 
remain in the service of his country, as an intimation to this effect 
was given him by Governor Tompkins. 

This discussion has had one benefit — that of introducing Ameri- 



THE WAR JOURNAL. 269 

cans to one of the most noble, though humble-minded of their 
fellow citizens, and who, if I rightly understand their character, 
they will see has all wMcJi trutTi and honor can claim— fair play. 
No one, not deeply prejudiced, or lost to discernment, can read the 
simple war journal of Mr. Williams, unostentatiously truthful as a 
dying confession, without feeling that here, in all the elements 
w^hich make man, he is a man. There are few tests of character 
like that of military life. Whatever a man has of good or evil in 
him it calls out, and no preux chevalier of olden time, could more 
modestly or stainlessly— I say nothing of courage, for that, apart 
from other qualities, is animal— with more of the spirit of 
Christian moderation and self-sacrifice, have played his part, than 
Eleazar Williams. During the whole of the war he never relin- 
quished the idea of becoming an Indian missionary— but retired at 
every opportunity to his quiet room for prayer, meditation, and 
study— having kindly thoughts even for his national enemies, and 
in the spirit of one of the noblest hearts that bled during the civil 
wars of England, supplicating God for peace, even on the field of 
blood. 

War was not his element, though his mind was for a time stirred 
by its excitement, and carried away by its brilliancy. " As soon 
as it was practicable," he says, in his memoranda for 1814, " I 
closed my military concerns with the General Government, and 
like a monk, entered into my ceil for meditation and reflection." 
He was confined several weeks by his wound, during which time 
he was sedulously attended by his reputed father, Thomas 
Williams, who restored him to health and strength by Indian 
herbs. While feebly reposing on his sick bed, his thoughts and 
aspirations rushed back to their original channel, and he deter- 
mined to consecrate the remainder of his days to preaching the 
Gospel. - 



270 THE LOST PRINCE. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THELAYMISSIONAET. 

Mk. Williams had 'peculiar qualifications for a missionary to 
the Indians. He possessed that key to their understandings and 
affections — without which no great success can attend any efforts 
to convert the heathen — a perfect knowledge of their language, 
customs, and modes of feeling and reasoning. His acquaintance 
with the Mohawk tongue, deficient in childhood, and impaired by 
long residence in New England, had been revived and increased 
during the war, and thus, his military life was a partial education 
for the ministry. Regarding himself, also, as an Indian, he entered 
on his task with a zest and fervor which can rarely attend the mis- 
sionary to the heathen, who generally sacrifices to a sense of duty, 
the love of country and the associations of home. Heart-rending 
were the feelings of Martyn, when, from the jungles of India, he 
thought what might have been his earthly lot, had he not violently 
divorced himself from all he loved. In the case of Mr. Williams, 
there was no such surrender. He was as much at home in the hut 
of the Indian, as in the abodes of civilization, while he carried to 
his work European amplitude of mind and warmth of heart, accom- 
panied with native grace and dignity of manners, sometimes mistaken 
for pride, but, nevertheless, imposing and attractive to the savage. 

An interview with some Oneidas, at Albany, in August, 1814, 
led to a visit to Oneida Castle in the following November, when he 
carried with him a wampum from Governor Taylor, of Albany. 
He was affectionately received by the chiefs, and addressed in a 
formal speech by one of the orators of the nation, who " arose," 
he says, " like a Roman senator, and, perhaps, not less in dignity, 
holding the wampum on high." He replied in the same strain. 



THE LAY MISSIONARY. 271 

There were, at that time, about twelve hundred Indians at Oneida, 
one half of whom were Christians of the Presbyterian persuasion, 
and the remainder pagans and adherents of the Prophet Kanyata- 
riyo. This distinction had existed since 1766, when the Gospel was 
first introduced among them by the Kev. Samuel Kirkland. 

A minister of the Scotch Kirk, the Kev. Mr. Jenkins, was, at 
the time of this visit, instructing the Christian party — but he was 
ignorant of their language, and the Indians complained of his frag- 
mentary and disjointed mode of preaching through an interpreter. 
The morals of the nation were at a very low ebb, and the Chris- 
tians distinguishable from the pagans in little but in name. Before 
leaving them, Mr. Williams addressed the whole nation, in council, 
on the duty of believing and obeying Christ ; and, after, his depar- 
ture, both translated and composed simple works for their reli- 
gious instruction. 

Shortly after his return to the north, he writes : — ' 

" The joyful intelligence reached us of the treaty of peace having been 
concluded between the British and American Commissioners. This event 
was celebrated by illuminations and demonstrations of joy on these nor- 
thern frontiers. Thus terminated an eventful and memorable war of two 
years and six months — a war pregnant with important admonition to 
Great Britain and to America. Both countries had to experience the mor- 
tifying reflection that, all 'the blood and treasure expended in the contest 
had been lavished in vain, scarcely any of the objects which were tha 
ostensible cause of the war having been obtained." 

He now applied himself, more closely than ever, to his prepara- 
tion for the ministry. During the war we have seen he had fre- 
quent interviews with the clergy of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, the solemnity of whose ritual, in the first place, attracted 
his attention, and so devotionally impressed his heart that, in spite 
of all tlie associations of his early years in New England, and the 
cherished and never to be forgotten kindness of his Congregational 
friends, to whom the honor is due of having first rescued him from 



272 THE LOST PRINCE. 

barbarism, and supplied all his wants -with a lavish affection, he 
attended the worship of the church, on all convenient occasions. 

A little incident which occurred during the war, when visiting 
the Eev. Mr. Clowes, of Albany, and which has, I believe, been 
published in a newspaper by the surviving brother of that gentle- 
man, who informed me of the fact, is deserving of record. A bril- 
liantly illuminated missal, of the character in use in cathedral 
churches on the continent, lay on the study table of Mr. Clowes, at 
the sight of which young "Williams, who was remarkable for his 
usually quiet and self-possessed demeanor, became suddenly agi- 
tated, to an astonishing degree, so as almost to give the impression 
of temporary insanity, and in the most earnest manner, as if some 
mysterious chord of feeling was touched, besought that it might be 
given to him. The request was refused, not so much on account of 
the value of the book, as, because, it was looked on as an act of 
unaccountable eccentricity. 

To his predilection for the Protestant Episcopal Church, was added 
the belief that her ritual and discipline would be more serviceable 
to the Indians than the extemporaneous worship of other denomina- 
tions, and, accordingly, in the month of May, 1815, he made a journey 
to New York, to lay his plans and feelings before Bishoj) Hobart, and 
receive his advice. 

" I wish to make known to the Bishop," he writes. " my feelings in regard 
to the Episcopal Church. Her ministry, doctrines, government, discipline, 
and mode of worship, I am fully persuaded, are in accordance with the word 
of God. I have read much upon the claims of this church, and I now firmly 
believe she is the true and sound part of the Church Militant, or the Church 
of Christ. I pray God to enlighten me more on this most important arid 
interesting subject. Church history has been my companion for more than 
one year. Five different authors I have read on this subject. 

" Troy^ May 11. — I have had several friendly interviews with the Rev. 
Mr. Butler, who has labored most earnestly to make me see that the Epis- 
copal Church of the United States ia the sound part of Christ's Church 
His arguments are more powerful with me than those offered in my former 



THE LAY MISSIONARY. 273 

interviews. He was very affectionate to me, and how could I do other- 
wise than love him, who takes such an interest in my spiritual welfare. 
By me, he will write to Bishop Hobart, to the Rev. Mr. Clowes, and Lieut- 
Governor Taylor, of Albany. Mr. Butler has warmed my heart on the sub- 
ject of religion. * 

" New Tori, May 14. Lord'' s Day Evening. — I arrived here in safety, 
to-day, about noon, went this afternoon to St. Paul's Church, and heard 
Mr. Creighton, and, this evening, heard Dr. Puoymaine. 

" Thursday 18 — I called upon the Ht. Eev. Bishop Hobart, and presented 
the introductory letters I had received from my friends in the north. The 
bishop received me with great cordiality, and appeared to be much gratified. 

^'Neio Yorlc, Monday^ 22.— I took breakfast at Dr. Hosack's, with Mr. 
Eddy, and the Pbcv. Mr. Steward. I was introduced to young Dr. Francis, 
pupil of Dr. H., with whom I was highly pleased for his polite attention to 
me. He is a young man of promise. I cannot be too grateful to Dr. H. and 
lady for his polite invitation. 

" New Yorlc. May 29. — Bishop Hobart has requested me to take my board 
with the Rev. Mr. Onderdonk, to-morrow I shall go there, with which Mr. 
Ogden appears to be much gratified." 

The bishop acknowledged the duty of the church to the Indians, 
and promised his hearty co-operation in the designs of Mr. WilHams. 
In the record of their interviews the following scene occurs, equally 
honorable to both. We have seen, on various occasions, that the ex- 
treme doctrines of Calvinism did not harmonize with Mr. Williams's 
sentiments, but it was impossible to have mingled so much as he 
had with those who entertained them, without being tinctured. 
" When I touched," he says, " upon some controverted points of 
theology, the bishop abruptly observed that I was straining too 
much on those points which were considered, by some, to be in 
close alliance with the Calvinists. " Et. Rev. Father," said I, " it 
is not my wish to know, on the present occasion, Calvin, Luther, 
Arminius, or Wesley, but Christ and hira crucified. I have no desire 
to embrace the opinions of men, further than they follow Christ, 
It is my wish always to appeal to the law, and to the testimony, and 

12* 



274 THE LOST PRINCE. 

if their religious opinions are not in accordance with the Holy Scrip- 
tures, I, of course, reject them," To this the bishop, with a placid 
countenance, replied, "Right, my son." I continued, "you see, 
father, I am somewhat free and independent in my views, in regard 
to the high doctrines of the Gospel. If I am to be a teacher in the 
Episcopal Church, I trust I shall not be compelled to receive any- 
thing as an article of faith, which I may view as repugnant to the 
word of God: I acknowledge the Thirty-nine Articles are such as 
to command the approbation of orthodox Christians, and contain 
a vast amount of important truth, yet they were composed by falli- 
ble men. I will cheerfully adhere to them as far as they agree with 
the word of God." " This is all," said the bishop, " we can ask of 
you," and then continued with a solemn voice, " My son, holding 
the mystery of faith in a pure conscience, let no man despise thy 
youth, but be thou an example to the believers in word, in conversa- 
tion, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purit}''." 

For the first time in his life, he received the communion in St. 
John's church, on the 21st May, from the hands of the bishop and 
the Rev. B. T. Onderdonk. Of the kindness of the latter he 
speaks in terms of gratitude and affection. 

It was determined by the Bishop to send him among the Indians 
as a catechist, lay reader, and schoolmaster ; and in this humble 
capacity he continued for many years, performing all the duties of 
the ministry, except the administration of the sacraments. So 
unobtrusive was he, in this respect, that although his labors were 
crowned with the most ample success, and he enjoyed the full con- 
fidence of Bishop Hobart, he was not ordained until the year 1826. 
He had as little desire of self-aggrandisement in the church, as in the 
army. Provided he did the work assigned, he was satisfied. 
Other persons, with his endowments, would have despised the 
wigwam of the Indian, and sought for popularity and station in 
cities, and in the applause of the wealthy and intellectual. But 
personal display was not in his nature. Almost instinctively ho 
seems to have attached himself everywhere to the highest and 



THE LAY MISSIONARY. 2Y5 

most gifted minds, and there are few men who have adorned the 
annals of this country, from John Randolph to Gen. Taylor, who 
have not enjoyed his society and esteem. But through all vicissi- 
tudes, his affections reverted to the Indian huts, on which his eyes 
had first opened in boyhood ; and to preach the glad-tidings of sal- 
vation, in sounds, to others barbarous, but to him, most meaning 
and most musical, was the one absorbing desire of his heart. 

He mentions, at this period, several interviews with the Eev. E. 
0. Steward, of St. Armand, Lower Canada, who was a son of 
Lord Galway, and expresses delight that one of noble blood would 
rather " be an humble messenger of the Lord of Hosts, than enjoy 
the ease and luxuries which are to be found in palaces." " how 
powerful," he exclaims, " is that grace which gives divine life here, 
and eternal glory in the coming world !" 

Through the influence of Bishop Hobart, who, on the 23d May, 
1815, addressed an appeal to churchmen, for contributions for the 
purpose, he undertook the revision of former translations of the 
Prayer Book into the Mohawk language, and also attempted to 
establish a school for the Indians, at St. Regis. In the latter 
project he was disappointed, owing to the political feuds in the 
tribe, and the opposition of many against him, in consequence of 
the part he had taken in the war of 1812. He wrote, under date 
of August 3, 1815, a full account of the difficulties under which he 
labored, to the Rev. Mr. Onderdonk. The purest intentions, and 
the most self-denying conduct, are not sufficient to ensure success, 
and those who have no criterion for worth, but success, will often 
be unjust to those most deserving commendation. The Romish 
priest, at St. Regis, backed by all the influence of the Brit- 
ish government, used every effort, justifiable and unjustifiable, 
to injure Mr. Williams in the estimation of the Indians, and we 
shall see, in the sequel, the lengths to which his successor has 
dared to proceed. But truth and innocence have only to be 
patient, and bide their time, and the moment of retribution will 
come. 



276 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Baffled, for the time, by Eomish influence and political prejudices, 
in his efforts at St. Eegis, he turned his thoughts to Oneida, the 
chiefs, warriors, and counsellors of the nation, having applied to 
Bishop Hobart, that he might be sent to them as a religious 
teacher. He arrived there, vyith a letter from the bishop, on 23d 
March, 1816. The minister of the Presbyterian Kirk was recalled 
at the request of the chief, by the Missionary Society who had 
sent him, and Mr. "Williams accepted by the whole nation. 

It is not my purpose to enter into the endless details of his 
labors among the Indians, which are ample enough to form a work 
of absorbing interest, to those who can sympathize with the strug- 
gles of the humble missionary, but simply to state results and 
leading events. On his arrival among them, he found the 
Christian part of the nation, in the most deplorable moral condi- 
tion, and the heathen given up to idolatry, witchcraft, and 
drunkenness, while all of them, though attached personally to him, 
as one who could address them in their language, were indisposed 
to receive the ritual of the Protestant Episcopal Church — but by 
preaching and oral conferences, in which he explained their diffi- 
culties, and met the various objections, infidel or sectarian, they 
brought, with a quiet practical wisdom and simplicity which 
might serve as a model for a missionary among the heathen in any 
part of the world, he not only converted, in a brief space of time, 
the whole of the heathen party, but united the whole nation, in 
adherence to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church, achieving a victory over prejudice and 
unbelief, absolutely unparalleled in our ecclesiastical annals, in this 
country. 

The following document, exhibits the result of his labors : — 

" To His Excellency the Governor of the State of Neto York. 
" May it please your Excellency : 

" We, the chiefs and principal men of that part of the Oneida nation of 
Indians, heretofore known and distinguished as the " Pagan Party," in 



THE DAY MISSIONARY. 277 

the name of the said party, beg leave to address your Excellency on a 
subject which, we hope, will be as pleasing to your Excellency as it is to us. 

" We no longer own the name of pagans. We have abandoned our 
idols and our sacrifices, and have fixed our hopes on our blessed Redeemer. 
In evidence of this assertion, we here tender to your excellency, solemnly 
and unequivocally, our abjuration of paganism and its rites^ and have 
taken the Christians' God to be our God, and our only hope of sal- 
vation. We believe in God the Father, the Creator and Preserver of all 
things, as omniscient and omnipresent, most gracious and most merciful 
We believe in Jesus Christ, that He is the Son of God, the Saviour of the 
world, the Mediator between God and man, and that all must believe in 
Him, and embrace Him, in order to obtain salvation. We believe in God 
the Sanctifier and Comforter of all the children of men. We believe in a 
general Resurrection, and a future judgment in which all men shall be 
judged, according to their works. We believe the Scriptures to be the 
Word of God, and that in them are contained all things necessary to man's 
salvation. We present to your Excellency this abstract of our faith, in 
order to demonstrate the impropriety of our retaining any longer the name 
of pagans. We trust that, through the mercy of God, we have abandoned 
the character of pagans. Let us also abandon the name. We, therefore, 
request your Excellency, that in all future transactions with this state, we 
may be known and distinguished as the ' Second Christian party of the 
Oneida nation of Indians ;' and we pray that your Excellency will take such 
means as may be necessary and proper to cause us to be known and recog- 
nised in future by that name. And in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, 
we do here sign ourselves your Excellency's most sincere friends. 

" Done in General Council, at Oneida, this 25th day of January, 1817." 

The following Indians subscribed to the above, each one making hia 
mark : — 

Corn. Otheasheat, Peter Santhecalchos, 

Aririus Tehoramogo, Nichs. Garongontie, 

John. Cannelius, Moses Schuyler, 

Jacob Atoni, Wm. TegarentotashoiT, 

Wm. Toniateshen, Wm. Tehoiatatshe, 
Peter Twaserashe.* 

* Christian Journal, p. 62, vol. i. 



278 THE LOST PRINCE. 

" It was an affecting sight," writes Mr. "Williams, speaking of the 
council in which this document was drawn up, " to see the aged and 
venerable chiefs, counsellors, matrons, and warriors, with uplifted 
hands, and with countenances indicating that their minds were 
deeply affected, unitedly, with a loud voice, renouncing the princi- 
ples of paganism, and making their profession of the Christian 
faith." 

As a substantial token of their sincerity in the adoption of the 
Christian religion, the chiefs gave Mr. Williams one hundred acres 
of land, which, however, were used and expended for the benefit 
of the nation — and they also contributed four thousand dollars 
towards the erection of a chapel. 

During all this time, with the exception of his salary from the 
Missionary Society, of one hundred and twenty-five dollars per 
annum, Mr. Williams received nothing from the church, and as, 
from motives of delicacy he declined aid proffered him by his New 
England friends, whose communion he had conscientiously left, 
though, to their lasting honor be it said, this made no difference in 
their affection for him, or their willingness to contribute to his 
support, he continued, until he had expended all, in the service 
of the church, to subsist on his hard-earned remuneration from the 
United States Government. 

The intimacy formed in 1816 by Mr. Williams with the Eev. 
M. Stewart, of St. Armand, Canada, soon ripened into friend- 
ship. Letters frequently passed between them respecting the 
spiritual interests of the Indians and translations into Mohawk; 
and after the elevation of Mr. Stewart to the Episcopate of 
Quebec, his affection for Mr. Williams continued unabated. Be- 
fore he left America, in later years, for ever, he wrote to Mr. 
Wilham.s to come and see him. "I went," says Mr. Williams, 
" to the place appointed for the meeting, and there, after many 
prayers by ourselves, I, with many tears and a bleeding heart, took 
the hand of my most beloved and sincere friend, for the last time. 
I left him, with heavy and sorrowful heart, to return to my distant 
abode in the west, and he to the eastward to lay his body — yea, 



THE LAY MISSIONARY. 2*79 

mingle his ashes, with his ancestors. O, my God ! what a meeting 
and what a journey was this, mingled with joy and sorrow." 

Hitherto, with the single check he had received in his efforts to 
establish a school among the Indians at St. Regis, the course of Mr. 
Williams had been a constant series of successes. A storm, which, 
at first, was only like a little cloud in the horizon, began now to 
brew at a distance. 

The Menominie and Winnebago Indians, having ample territories 
on the borders of Lake Michigan, which they were unable to occupy, 
were desirous to share them with their eastern brethren of the Six 
Nations, and made a generous proposition to surrender to the New 
York Indians many thousand acres of land in the neighborhood of 
Green Bay. A general council of the Six Nations was held in 1817, 
at Fort Meigs, on the Maumee river, to which the young Missionary 
Chief of the Oneidas was invited. De Witt Clinton, then Governor 
of New York, knowing his influence among the Indians, was 
anxious that he should attend, and wrote to Bishop Hobart asking 
his permission, as Mr. Williams, with military fidelity, refused to 
leave his post without the consent of his superior. The Bishop 
gave his consent, but Mr. Williams did not go to the council. 
Indeed he was at that time opposed to the project of removal, 
though afterwards he got entangled in this political measure of the 
General and State Government, which created a dislike to him 
in the minds of a portion of the Indians, which, fostered by other 
causes, in which he was entirely innocent, has continued till the 
present day. 

Though merely a lay reader, from the necessities of the case, he 
performed all the duties of an ordained minister, except the admi- 
nistration of the sacraments, and it is curious, considering the 
ardent nature of his Protestantism, and the influences under which 
he had been educated, to read the following entry in his journal 
for 1817, at a time the Episcopal Church in this country was 
quaker-like in the unadorned simplicity of its worship. " The joy- 
ful festival of the Nativity was celebrated by the natives with 



280 THE LOST PRINCE. 

peculiar solemnity. On Christmas evening our cliapel was dressed 
up with evergreens in beautiful order. In celebrating the Divine 
Service and the august ceremonies of the Holy Church this night, 
/ chanted at the altar ^ Gloria in Excelsis^ and Te Deum Laudamus^ 
and other parts of tJie service, with which the congregation were 
highly gratified." This event reminds one of the anecdote of the 
missal related by Mr. Clowes. There must, indeed, have been a 
somewhat strange state of things at Oneida, although it was with 
the fall knowledge and approbation of Bishop Hobart. Though 
merely a layman, Mr. "Williams wore a surplice in performing 
divine service, and, according to a practice of the times, had his 
hair powdered ; and, worse yet, — I cannot forbear a smile at the 
dismay the sight would have occasioned some of my friends — was 
attended with a bevy of little Indian boys, similarly clad. But this 
was only in accordance with the policy afterwards pursued by the 
Congregational missionaries among the eastern churches ; and 
Bishop Hobart, who knew the Indians required ceremony and out- 
ward display, like a man of common sense, who could distinguish 
a doctrine from a vestment, did not suspect the lay missionary of 
Komish tendencies, because he donned a white garment in the 
sanctuary, and arrayed in snow a few copper-colored cherubs. 
Controversy makes things odious and, I grant, pernicious, very 
harmless in themselves. At the Bishop's visitation, the little sur- 
pliced Oneidas, like choristers in English cathedrals, walked in 
front of him. Moni soit qui mal y pense. 

The bishop also permitted, the zealous layman to preach his own 
sermons. Indeed, he could not have done otherwise, as there were 
no hot-pressed Iroquois homilies to which he could resort. The 
church, if she would be useful, must adapt herself to circumstances, 
and eschew Procrusteanism in accidents. Cut and stretch according 
to the creed, but allow latitude in the canon, arm-like action from 
a fixed centre of principle — here is power. 

Notwithstanding the ability Mr. Williams manifested in every- 
thing calling for the display of the highest endowments of mind, in 



THE LAY MISSIONARY. 281 

that peculiar region where the moral faculties are required to aid 
the intellectual, there was an absolute want in him, of that which, 
in a mercantile community, is regarded as constituting the man — 
viz. the power of keeping money when he had got it. He had 
received $10,000 from the United States, for his services during the 
war, but allowed it to get beyond his control, and would have lost 
it, but for the friendly exertions of Chancellor Kent, Gov. Taylor, 
the Hon. Nathan Williams, and Morris S. Miller, of Utica. He was 
left, for a time, in almost entire destitution, with nothing to support 
him but his $125. In a long communication to Bishop Hobart, 
which, with the bishop's affecting answer, may be found in the 
"Christian Journal," vol. ii. p. 268, the Oneida Indians say, "agree- 
ably to your request, we have treated our brother with that atten- 
tion and kindness which you required of us : we have assisted him 
all that was in our power, but we cannot do a great deal. Though 
our brother has lived very poor since he came among us, he is 
patient and makes no complaint : w^e pity him, because we love him 
as we do ourselves. We wish to do something for his support, but 
this is impossible, as we have lately raised between 3 and 4,000 dol- 
lars to enable us to build a little chapel." 

Burning with zeal for the advancement of Christ's cause, he 
hoped that his unparalleled success among the Indians would stimulate 
the church, into whose ranks he had entered, from conscientious 
motives, to extend the mission among the rest of the New York 
Indians, who were desirous, if he could be supported, to receive the 
Gospel at his hands, but he could wring nothing from the treasury 
but the munificent sum of $125. Thus reduced to despair, with a 
generous self-sacrifice, which few can even understand, he solemnly 
consecrated to God's service his $10,000 as soon as it was assured 
him by the exertions of his friends. " All this," he writes, " I trust 
was spent- with the greatest economy, as a faithful steward — as one 
who must render an account of his stewardship." 

In the summer of 1818, his health being very feeble, on account 
of his many trials and arduous labors, Mr. Williams undertook a 



282 THE LOST PRINCE. 

journey to the north, accompanied by La Fort, a young Onondaga 
chief of fine abilities, who embraced Christianity, and had for several 
months been studying with him the English language. La Fort 
afterwards received an excellent education, under the patronage of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, but finally relapsed into Heathen- 
ism, in a great measure in consequence of depression of spirits, 
owing to his neglect by the church, and the unpopularity of Chris- 
tianity among his Heathen brethren. At Morristown, on the St. 
Lawrence, they were entertained by Judge Ford; and at "Waddington, 
by Hon. D. A. Ogden, at whose house they met the British and 
American Commissioners, who were deciding the boundaries between 
the British and American provinces. 

On their arrival at St. Eegis, the Rev. Mr. Marcoux, the Eomish 
priest, put into his hand a letter of introduction to the Rev. Mr. 
Dufresne, at Caughnawaga, who gave him another to the Rev, Mr. 
Richards, formerly a Methodist minister, but then residing at the 
Seminary, at Montreal. He went to see this gentleman on 4th 
August. Richards was, at first, constrained in his manner, but at 
last assumed a more cheerful appearance, and said, " I believe, sir, 
3^ou must be the gentleman, noticed in the public prints, as a mis- 
sionary, who is doing much good among the Oneidas. I once 
passed through their settlement. You are connected, I believe, 
with the Episcopal Church, and Dr. Hobart is your Bishop. I am 
stjrprised that you have connected yourself with that false church, 
a church that has no lawful ministry. The Church of Rome is the 
most ancient church. The Church of England is of yesterday." 
Mr. Williams hereupon reminded him of the reply of Queen 
Elizabeth to the Jesuits, when they petitioned her to restore the 
" ancient Catholic faith," to the efitjct, that their own records made 
them liars, and proved that Christianity existed in England 
independent of Rome, long prior to the time of Austin. Richards 
dropped the subject, showed him the library of the Seminary and 
the parish church, and invited him back to his room, when the fol- 
lowing conversation occurred. 



THE LAY MISSIONARY. 283 

• 

" I believe, sir," said Eichards, " that you are the gentleman of 
whom the Abbe de Calonne, of Three Elvers, has often spoken, as 
a person whose history was hidden in the womb of mystery, in 
regard to your descent, and the cause of your adoption among the 
Indians of this province." " This excited my curiosity," writes 
Mr. Williams, " to ask him what mystery it might be which the 
Abb6 supposes to be about my birth and family ?" " He supposes," 
said he, " you are a foreigner by birth, and of high family." " If 
this be the opinion of the Abbe," said I, " he must have some evi- 
dence of it." " He has, of course," he replied, " but as to the 
extent of it, I cannot say." " I am, however, inclined to believe 
that it is a mere conjecture with him, for when I have pressed 
upon him to be more explicit, he would evade the question by say- 
ing — 'It is in a great measure conjectural with me.' " 

" I then observed to him, it would be highly gratifying to me, 
were I to know my family, and the cause of their putting me 
among the Indians." "This, I presume," he said, "the Abb6 
would not say, so long as he himself is not fully satisfied on the 
point. I am satisfied he has more information upon this subject 
than he is willing to communicate. There are known circum- 
stances, which are strong in their nature, and which would prove, 
it seems, that you are not the son of an Iroquois chief. I would be 
happy, if in my power to unveil this mystery to you. I will see 
the Abbe again." He then gave me a pat on the shoulder, and 
said, " You are, I suspect, of higher grade by blood than the son 
of an Iroquois chief." 

" These extraordinary declarations produced some sensations in 
my feelings," he writes, " although it was not the first time such 
hints were thrown in my way. On reflection, however, my con- 
viction was that I had been taken for one of those youths and 
children who had been given to the Indians by the poor French 
Canadians." 

On his return to the Sault St. Louis, by the permission of the 
missionary priest, he examined the parochial register, and found 



284 THE LOST PRINCE. 

» 

that all the names of the children of Thomas Williams were 
registered excepting Eleazar, " at which," says Mr. Williams, " the 
priest appeared greatly surprised and vexed, as in my former inter- 
view he would make me appear as if I was the child of the 
Eomish Church by baptism," 

This was the first time that serious doubts were awakened in his 
mind as to his belonging to the family of Thomas Williams, but 
haviug nothing tangible to support them, they died away gradually. 
While absorbingly occupied with present interests, duties, and 
trials, he referred the whole subject to Providence and futurity — 
and having nothing before him but vague suspicion, for which there 
seemed little foundation, continued in everything to act and feel 
towards his reputed kinsmen, far and near, as he had always done. 

On the 3d September, 1818, Bishop Hobart visited Oneida Castle, 
and confirmed eighty-nine persons, who had been prepared for that 
holy rite by Mr. Williams. The bishop produced a great effect on 
their minds, and months after, they told Mr. Williams that, when 
they thought upon the scene, they imagined they felt his hands 
upon their heads, and heard his voice, saying, " Defend, O Lord, 
this thy servant." 

In the ensuing Convention the bishop spoke in the highest terms 
of applause of the zealous labors of the missionary. Indeed, it was 
impossible to speak in terras of laudation too strong of the exertions 
of Mr. Williams, at this time, in the cause of Christ. He was not 
only laboring hard as a missionary, catechist, and lay reader, and 
performing the practical duties of a pastor, but was supporting and 
educating, in a great measure, at his own expense, several young 
Indians for the ministry. Besides which, extending his exertions 
from the Oneidas to the Onondagas, he created such a sensation in 
favor of Christianity, as to lead to the convening of a general council 
of the Seneca, Cayuga, Tuacarora, Mohawk, Stockbridge, and St. 
Eegis Indians, to take into consideration the duty of embracing the 
Christian faith. The services of the Church were solemnly per- 
formed with chants and hymns, and a debate ensued which lasted 



THE LAY MISSIONARY. 285 

several days, but led to no results, owing to the fierce opposition of 
tlie Pagan party. The subject was referred to a future council, to 
meet at Buffalo Creek, on the 8th October, 1819. 

Between the session of the two councils, the chapel at Oneida was 
consecrated by Bishop Hobart, and the most devout feeling pre- 
vailed among the Indians. 

The discussion was resumed at the appointed time, and the sub- 
stance of many of the speeches on both sides, presenting choice 
specimens of eloquence, not unworthy the halls of a civilized legis- 
lature, have been preserved by Mr. Williams, who, as an Oneida 
chief, being a delegate to the council, on this occasion, and the 
main pillar of the Christian cause, was opposed to the famous Ked 
Jacket, and maintained with him, for three days, a fierce debate, in 
which everthing that the malice and ingenuity of a strong minded 
and eloquent idolator, sharpened by the necessities of forensic strife, 
and winged with sarcasm, could urge against the Gospel, or the 
lives of its adherents, was brought forward on one hand, and on the 
other the truth, the beauty, the divinity of the Christian religion, 
and the folly, absurdity, superstition, and degrading tendency of 
Heathenism. Wearied at last, and overpowered, though not con- 
vinced by an eloquence, perseverance, wisdom, and resolution, 
superior to his own, Red Jacket abandoned the contest. " His 
language," says Mr. Williams, " was certainly beautiful. His argu- 
ments, as far as they went, were powerful, yet he was placed in 
an unfortunate position, he was opposed to a subject with which he 
was little acquainted. His position was studied and examined, his 
arguments well weighed, but by his antagonist promptly met. 
For he understood his language — it was, therefore, a fair combat. 
Hitherto had he boasted, and his adherents with him, that he had 
beaten all the missionaries who had attempted to meet him. When 
he was excited, as he was at times in his declamations, then his elo- 
quence was at its height. It was then, indeed, that the flow of 
words and arguments, the music of his voice, the graceful gestures 
of his arms, and the ease and majestic motions of his body, were 



286 THE LOST PRINCE. 

exciting and animating in the extreme. He appeared to the best 
advantage on the first day of his declamations, in which he occupied 
the floor the greater part of the time. There was only time for me 
to make a few preliminary remarks upon the points which would 
form the subject of my discussion on the following day, before the 
council adjourned. One of the Pagan chiefs observed to another 
that, ' Red Jacket, the King of the Orators of the Six Nations, has 
just commenced his oratory, and before he finishes he will make the 
young missionary feel the weight of his power.' " 

A vote was obtained from the council more favorable than could 
have been expected at so early a period, in the death conflict 
between the hereditary superstition and the newly introduced 
Gospel, permitting the establishment of schools, though as yet they 
would not consent to the introduction of missionaries. It was 
regarded as a victory by the Christians, for in the conflict of parties, 
both on a small and great scale, that which wavers and declines 
must ultimately fall, and every foothold of advance is a step 
towards ultimate triumph. 

It is sad to think that zeal so unbounded, self-sacrifices so noble, 
and successes so great, should have passed out of the mind of the 
church as if they had never been ; and sadder still, to think that 
there was not sufficient missionary zeal in the ranks of the Epis- 
copal Church to listen to the exhortations of Bishop Hobart, or 
appreciate and sustain the efibrts of Mr. Williams. 

The reader will have noticed throughout Mr. Williams's history, 
that while his mental powers were most vigorous, and his exertions 
intense, every season of exertion was followed by a prostration of 
. health. It was so in the present instance. He continued, however, 
laboring unweariedly — for his duties were such as scarcely to admit 
cessation — when at length, in the midst of his favorite Christmas 
solemnities, his voice failed while chaunting, and bleeding of the 
lungs ensued. He was, therefore, compelled to leave, and travel 
for his health, the only remedy he had from boyhood found avail- 
able. 



THE LAY MISSIONARY. 287 

He was also summoned to WashiDgton, at this time, on public 
business of the highest importance to the Oneidas, and, as it even- 
tually proved, of most disastrous consequences to himself. The 
government of the United States had now determined to attempt 
the removal of the New York Indians to the west, and, relying on 
the ability of Mr. Williams, and his influence with the nation, sum- 
moned him to its councils. 

The subject of removal had engaged his attention for many years, 
and he was at first much opposed to it, but observation, reflection, 
and consultation with others, had all contributed to change his 
views. 

The Indians had no longer the ample territories and hunting- 
grounds they once possessed. Encroached upon, on all sides, 
by the rapid strides of civilization, and dwindling, as barbarism 
ever must, in power and numbers, when in contiguity with a great 
civilized people, they had lost, piecemeal, a large portion of their 
lands, and the prospect was, they would be entirely swallowed 
by the swelling tide which hemmed them in on all sides. 
Besides which, there were many claimants to the Indian lands in 
the State of New York, foremost among whom were Messrs. Ogden 
& Co., who, as far back as 1796 or '7, had actually purchased large 
portions of these lands from the colony of Massachusetts, which, in 
the adjustment of boundary difiiculties between it and New York, 
had obtained a pre-emption interest in the Indian country, with 
right of extinguishing the Indian title, which passed over to the 
purchasers, who had thus a joint interest with the General and 
State Governments in causing the removal of the Indians. 

In December, 1819, the Eev. Dr. Morse, on behalf of the United 
States Government, visited Oneida, and Mr. "Williams convened the 
nation, in general council, to hear his address, in which he urged 
them, by such considerations as those above, and by showing the 
impossibility of their continuing to lead a hunting life in the State 
of New York, to consent to retire to the lands formerly occupied by 
the Menominies and "Winnebagoes, in the neighborhood of Green 



288 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Bay — negociations oonoerning whioh with the Six Nations, began 
even before the war of 1812, but. Interrupted by that event, had 
been renewed. He also read the memorial of the Sachems and 
chiefs of the Six Nations to the President of the United States, in 
November, 1815, on the subject, with the answer of the President. 
It was a subject too weighty to admit of immediate decision, as the 
Oneidas were greatly divided in opinion ; but the visit of Dr. Morse 
led to a correspondence between the government and Mr. "Williams, 
which ended by his being invited to Washington. On his way, he 
called on Bishop Hobart, in New York, who gave him a letter of 
introduction to President Monroe, and expressed the greatest sym- 
pathy, both with his infirm condition of health and the business 
on which he was engaged. The Bishop, who took an enlightened and 
statesman-like view of the subject, had for several years regarded 
emigration westward, as the only means of saving the Indians, and 
had persuaded Mr. Williams to use his influence in furtherance of 
the design. It is necessary to understand all this to perceive how 
he was first withdrawn from strict missionary duty, and placed in 
political opposition to a portion of the Oneid/xs. 

President Monroe and Mr. Calhoun, Secretary of War, received 
him kindly at Washington ; but though much attention was shown 
him on all sides, his favorite appears to have been John Ean- 
dolph, in whose society and conversation he took great delight. On 
the arrival of Dr. Morse, an expedition to the west was determined, 
and the War Department agreed to furnish means for prosecuting 
it, according to plans furnished, at request of the Government, by 
Mr. Williams. The party was to consist of Dr. Morse, Mr. Williams, 
and eight Indians, delegates from the Six Nations. 

The Secretary of War, under date of February 9, 1820, wrote to 
Governor Cass and General McOomb, stating that the expedition 
was undertaken with the approbation of the President, and recom- 
mending Mr. Williams to their care, besides sending fuller commu- 
nications to them, and the commandants of the diflferent posts in 
the west. 



•THE LAY MISSIONARY. 289 

Governor Clinton, also, charged Mr. Williams to obtain for him 
extensive statistical information respecting the traditions, language, 
customs, numbers, and government of the western Indians ; which 
he subsequently embodied in his discourses before the New York 
Historical Society. And Bishop Hobart, likewise, wrote to him, 
before his departure, giving him permission to leave his missionary 
station for the purpose contemplated ; " satisfied," he says, " as I 
am, that it is your supreme desire to promote the temporal and spi- 
ritual welfare of your countrymen, and, further, the benevolent 
views of the government." 

On the arrival of Mr. Williams and the deputies at Detroit, July 
11, 1820, they found General Cass absent atMaumee river, making 
a treaty with the Potowatomies, and could obtain no aid from Lieut.- 
Gov. Woodbridge, with whom they conferred, as he said he had no 
authority to assist them. To their surprise, also, on the return of Dr. 
Morse, who had preceded them westward to Green Bay, they learned 
that the agent of the United States, Colonel Boyer, at that place, 
had purchased by treaty, from the Indians, the very lands they had 
gone out to survey — a transaction they imputed to General Cass, 
who, as Governor of the territory, was at the head of the Indian 
department — it being in no way probable, that a subordinate 
would act in such a manner, at sucb a moment, without the know- 
ledge and approbation of his superior. Baffled and disappointed in 
their undertaking, the deputies memorialized the government on 
the subject, and expressed their chagrin at the transaction. They 
then returned eastward from Detroit ; and Mr. Williams was com- 
pelled to proceed to, and spend the winter at, Washington, to 
oppose the ratification of the treaty, which he did successfully, with 
the approbation and assistance of the President and the Secretary 
of War. Permission was then given .to the Six Nations to make 
arrangements with the Menominies and Winnebagoes for the pur- 
chase of the lands, and it became necessary for Mr. Williams to set 
out again to the west. As the mission at Oneida had suffered 
greatly in consequence of his absence in 1820, he procured imme- 

18 



290 THE Lost prince. 

diately on his return from the west, in the fall of that year, the 
services of a young gentleman of the name of Ellis, to act as lay 
reader. The health of Mr. Ellis was weak, and, in the spring of 
1821, Mr. Williams determined to take him with him to the west 
for the benefit of his health. With the sanction of Bishop Hobart, 
he entrusted the care of his mission, during the second absence, to 
a poor young man, of pleasing manners and seeming piety, named 
Solomon Davis, whom he furnished with clothes and other necessa- 
ries, and left in care of his house and library. 

Before the departure of Mr. Williams, the bishop, who was now 
deeply interested in the project for the removal of the Indians to 
the west, addressed the Oneidas in a long letter, from which I will 
insert the following passages : — 

" My Children. — I am fully satisfied that it is the benevolent wish of 
the Government of the United States, in all their plans, to promote your 
good. 

" My Children. — ^Your friend and brother and instructor, Eleazar 
Williams, I am fully persuaded, has you constantly in his heart : and it 
is the object of his thoughts, and cares, and plans, and labors, to make you 
good, and respectable, and happy. 

" My Children. — It is expedient that he should go on a journey to the 
west, to see if he can find some territory, where the Stockbridge Indians 
and others, who are disposed to go, may reside ; and particularly to ascer- 
tain whether your western brethren are inclined to embrace the Gospel of 
our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, which is the great and only means of 
making us good and happy, here and hereafter. 

" My Children, — Let Mr. Williams go, and aid him all you can in the 
important objects of his journey. 

"John H. Hobart." 

To show the deep interest taken in this expedition, so unfortu- 
nate to Mr. Williams, I need only further insert the following tes- 
timonial with which he was furnished, by the Governor of New 
York:— 



THE LAY MISSIONARY. 2^1 

" De Witt Clinto7t, Governor of the State of New Yor^, to all to whom 
these presents shall come, greeting : 

" Mr. Eleazar Williams, and several of the chiefs of the Six Nations resi- 
dent in this state, being on an exploring tour to the west, on business of 
importance, I do hereby recommend them to the protection and hospi- 
tality of all persons to whom they may apply for the same. 

" In witness whereof, I have hereunto affixed my hand and the privy 
seal of the state, at the city of Albany, this 17th day of May, A.D., 1821. 

" De Witt Clinton." 

The deputation from the Six Nations, with Mr. Williams at their 
head, arrived at Detroit, July 12, 1821. Governor Oass, being 
absent, deputed Mr. Trowbridge to act as agent for the government, 
and he accompanied the party to Green Bay. " We are very for- 
tunate," writes Mr. Williams, " that such a gentleman as Mr. Trow- 
bridge was appointed to superintend, on the present occasion, the 
concerns of the New York Indians." 

On July 31, they left Detroit in the steamer, " Walk in Water.'* 
The Eev. Dr. Yates, of the Reformed Dutch Church, and Rev. Dr. 
Richard, of the Romish Church, were of the company. On 3d 
August, they touched at the island of Michilimackinac and admired 
"its beauty and majestic appearance," and passing through the 
Straits of Lake Huron and Michigan, arrived August 5, at ten 
o'clock, in the Fox River, opposite Fort Howard. 

Communication was immediately opened with the Menominies 
and the Winnebagoes. At first, the latter were desirous of making 
a present of the land to the New York Indians; but this was 
declined, on account of the insecurity which would attend the 
title, in future times. It was finally agreed the land should be 
purchased, by treaty, which was accordingly done on August 
17, in a grand council — the terms being two thousand dollars, five 
hundred of which were to be paid immediately and fifteen hundred 
within one year. Having accomplished his mission for the govern- 
cnent and the Indians, Mr. "Williams returned home, and arrived at 



292 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Oneida Castle, September 28, 1821. He received the thanks and 
congratulations both of the General and State Goyernraents, and 
also of Bishop Hobart, for the ability with which he had 
conducted the affair. 

" I congratulate you," wrote De "Witt Clinton, in transmitting him 
a check for two hundred and fifty dollars, " on the success of your 
mission." This, I may remark, being a mere payment of expenses, 
was all which Mr. Williams has ever received for services by 
which the State of New York has so largely benefitted in conse- 
quence of the sales of land by emigrating tribes to her. 

But now, in earnest, began the troubles of his latter years. The 
reader will remember that the Oneida Indians were divided into 
two parties, formerly Christian and Pagan ; but, since the success- 
ful missionary efforts of Mr. Williams, known as the First and 
Second Christian parties. Of these, the First was favorable, and 
the Second, opposed to emigration. Political prejudices, fostered 
by certain religious teachers, for their own ends, alienated the 
Second Christian party from the man to whom they were indebted 
for the faith of Christ, and who had been laboring to the best of 
his ability, and the neglect of his own interests, to promote their 
welfare and that of the whole body of the Indians. 

It was, at this time, that system of calumny began, so well con- 
tinued and imitated by others up to the present time, and the 
effects of which can only be counteracted by such an exposure to 
the public eye as I am now making of the life, character, and 
actions of the man. Happy for every one if their past lives would 
bear scrutiny as well as that of Eleazar Williams. The Second 
Christian party of Indians, or rather a few individuals among them, 
repudiated, in the name of the whole nation, any connection with 
the recent delegation to the west, which they represented as a 
fraudulent attempt, on the part of Mr. Williams, to draw them 
from the homes of their forefathers, and repeatedly wrote to 
Bishop Hobart on the subject, requesting that he would withdraw 
him from being their teacher, and appoint Mr. Solomon Davis in 



THE LAY MISSIONARY. 293 

his place. The bishop paid no attention to them, and did not even 
deign to reply. They sent a delegation to Washington, who were 
at once informed that the affair had the sanction of the President, 
and that Mr. Williams had in everything acted honorably and 
uprightly. And the First Christian party, meeting in council, 
declared that they had appointed the delegation which accompa- 
nied Mr. Williams to represent them, exposed the influences by 
which the opposition to him had been fomented, and expressed the 
fullest affection for, and confidence in him. 

Unable to injure Mr. Williams in the estimation of Bishop 
Hobart, the party of opposition wrote to the Rev. Wm. B. Lacy, 
of Albany, requesting him to use his influence for the removal of 
Mr. Williams, and the appointment of Mr. Solomon Davis. " Our 
affections for him," they say, "are changed. We cannot reverence 
and respect him as we once did. He has tried by every means in 
his power to draw us from our lands. While he continued faithful 
to our spiritual interests, and remained with us as a teacher of good 
things, we loved him and endeavored to assist him, but when he 
became discontented with his situation, neglected us, and often left 
us, we became jealous of our rights. Ambition appears to be the 
ruling passion in his breast. The ImiiibU cottages of tlie natives ill 
suit the dignity of his mind. We, however, forbear personal 
reflections and solicit relief. Our wishes centre in Mr. Solomon 
Davis." 

As this gentleman was said to be the instigator of this communi- 
cation, Mr. Williams kindly wrote to inform him of the fact, at the 
same time giving him some friendly advice respecting the prosecution 
of his studies. Mr. Lacy enclosed the letter of the Indians to Bishop 
Hobart, with the following remarks: — "Although I have a high 
opinion of Mr. Williams's zeal and fidelity to the cause, I am afraid 
he has lost Ms influence among the Oneidas. Prejudice, founded 
on invincible ignorance, is often unconquerable, and the best way 
to avoid its consequence, is generally, in the case of clergymen, to 
flee from it. Under this impression I am inclined to think that the 



294 THE LOST PRINCE. 

sooner Mr. Williams enters on his mission to Green Bay the better 
it will be for him and the church." 

While difficulties, not of his own creation, were thus thickening 
around him at Oneida, his missionary exertions for many years past 
were justly appreciated by the more intelligent portion of the com- 
munity, and he records in his journal an interesting correspondence, 
in January, 1822, with Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, who wrote for informa- 
tion respecting his mission, and the condition and habits of the 
Indians, in which both she and her husband took a lively interest. 

Mr. Williams had now, though unordained, been laboring as a 
missionary under the auspices of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
for seven years, and during that time he had received, according to 
the account of Genit H. Van Wagenen, Esq., the treasurer of the 
Missionary Society, of N'ew York, now before me, $1,119 3, being 
on an average, about $160 per annum. During this space of time 
he had expended in behalf of the church, with the exception of 
$4 or $500, all his little fortune received from the government. It 
is not necessary to recapitulate the services he had rendered to the 
church, or ask the reader, with this simple statement of facts before 
him, whether, as a missionary, he seems to have been actuated by 
worldly motives, or by a sincere love to God, and a desire to pro- 
mote the temporal and spiritual welfare of the Indian race. If a 
cloud rested on the latter part of his career at Oneida, it certainly was 
not of his own creation. Poor as was his compensation, he would 
not have deserted his post, unnecessarily, even for an hour, had he 
not been called from it by a sense of duty to the people to whom 
he ministered, and who were too ignorant to appreciate his princi- 
ples or feelings. 

It seemed now necessary that he should seek another field of labor, 
and precede his people into the promised land of the west. After 
conference with Bishop Hobart, he resigned the station at Oneida, 
and set out for Green Bay, in July, 1822, with the design of being 
on the spot, when the portion of the Indians who were in favor of 
emigration should arrive there. In doing this he depended solely 



MARRIAGE AND ORDINATION. 206 

upon Providence. He went out without missionary station or sti- 
pend, a Christio/n layman^ who had dewted his life to God^ and 
patiently awaited the time, when he might be deemed worthy of 
serving his Divine master in the lowest ministry of his church. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MARRIAGE AND ORDINATION. 

The reader has now traced, step by step, and, almost, day by day, 
the career of Mr. Williams, since his first arrival in Massachusetts. 
He has seen the wonderful development of his intellect, accompa- 
nied by every manifestation which man can afford, to his fellow- 
men, of the purest piety ; he has been admitted, by his journals, 
into the inmost feelings of his heart ; he has followed him through 
the exciting scenes of his military life, and marked the success 
which attended his missionary efforts — together with the influences 
which broke in upon the simple and retired devotion of his life at 
Oneida. 

In the midst of a rich and cultivated country, surrounded by those 
he had civilized and Christianized, he had hoped to spend his days, 
ministering to his rustic flock, and worshipping in the beautiful lit- 
tle church, whose spire he had taught to rise amid the wigwams 
and hunting-grounds of the Indian, a centre of good influences, both 
to his own nation, and to the church, who, by his example, might 
be quickened in missionary zeal. 

The advice of his venerated bishop, the urgent request of the Pre- 
sident of the United States, the Secretary of War, and the Govenor 
of the State of New York, Hobart, Monroe, Calhoun, De Witt Clin- 
ton — compassion for the condition of the Indians, reliance on the 
faith of treaties, and the most ample minded and philanthropic views 
for the social regeneration of the aborigines, throughout the conti- 
nent, had induced, or rather compelled him to lead the way, as at 



296 THE LOST PRINCE. 

once a religions and a political pioneer, to the west, in order to 
induce the New York Indians to follow him, to what was designed 
as the perpetual seat and guarded haven of a down-trodden race. 

To vindicate the character, and detail the history of Mr. "Williams, 
as a man, and as a Christian, it is necessary to put the reader briefly 
in possession of the transactions relative to Indian affairs, in which 
he was engaged. 

In the early part of the century, the "Winnebagoes and the Meno- 
minies were the possessors of several millions of acres of most 
valuable land, on the borders of Lake Michigan. A general idea 
may be formed of its nature and extent, by drawing a line on a map 
from the mouth of the Milwaukee river westward to Fort Winne- 
bago — from thence northward to the high lands bordering on Lake 
Superior — and then south-eastward to Noquet Bay, opposite the 
entrance to Green Bay. It was Avell watered, and richly wooded — 
abounding in game, and fish, adapted alike for agricultural and hunt- 
ing purposes — but ample beyond the wants or desires of its uncivi- 
lized inhabitants. With the generosity of the savage, they proposed 
to share this noble territory with their eastern brethren. We have 
seen how the General and State Governments approved of and fos- 
tered this proposition; and how, at length, in 1821, in a treaty 
between the Winnebagoes and the Menominies, on the one hand, 
and the delegates of the Six Nations on the other, with the United 
States, in the person of its agent, standing by as a paternal witness, 
to afford its solemn sanction, and throw over the contracting par- 
ties the mantle of its protection, the New York Indians had pur- 
chased a certain portion of this territory. Beginning several miles 
from the mouth of the Fox river, it ran back in breadth seven or 
eight miles to a longitudinal extent of about seventy. This tract 
of country, was not, however considered by the Six Nations suffi- 
ciently large — and, with the sanction of government — application 
was made for an extension of the cession, in the year 1822, and Mr. 
Williams went to Green Bay, not only as a settler, but as a mem- 
ber of a delegation commissioned for this purpose. 



MARRIAGE AND ORDINATION. 29*? 

He was requested by General Cass to act as United States agent, 
on the occasion ; but, deeming the duties of this office incompatible 
with being a party to the transaction, he honorably declined it. A ■ 
treaty was entered into between the New York Indians and the 
Menominies only, on the 23d September, by which, for certain 
considerations — the latter admitted their eastern brethren to a full 
joint ownership of the half of the whole territory, possessed, pre- 
viously, in common by them and the Winnebagoes — with certain 
reservations, however, to guarantee individual rights, of which I 
shall speak more fully hereafter. 

IsTow, it is true, that, according to civilized valuation, the amount 
paid by the New York Indians was entirely inadequate for the just 
jjurchase of land, which, at a small estimate, exceeded a million and 
a half of acres. But, to view the negotiation in this light, is most 
absurd. It was an arrangement, between Indian tribes, for their 
mutual convenience and benefit, not only sanctioned, but encou- 
raged by government, for its own ends. 

The New York Indians, in purchasing this western territory, and 
consenting to removal, sacrificed to the State of New York, and to 
the pre-emption companies, their own valuable possessions in the 
east, and exchanged an ample, cultivated domain, for a wilder- 
ness, in the hope of obtaining an asylum for the red man, where, 
geographically protected by the lakes, and defended by the arm of 
government, he might remain for ever safe from Anglo Saxon 
cupidity, and grow up in wealth, civilization, morality, and 
religion. 

The dream of Mr. Williams, which he indulged in common witli 
the excellent bishop, and the great statesmen who had encouraged 
the project of removal, was, that all the remains of the Indian race 
in the territories of the United States, should be there gathered into 
one vast community, where the savage tribes might be won over to 
civilization and Christianity, by intercourse with their already 
civilized brethren. 

He hoped, at some future day, to establish a great Indian col- 



298 THE LOST PRINCE. 

lege, in which the red man from Canada, as well as the inhabitant 
of the States, might be instructed and trained in all things condu- 
cive to happiness here and hereafter. With this unselfish hope, he 
braved the hardships of the wilderness, poverty, and isolation, and 
patiently awaited the hour when he should be repaid by the sight 
of the prosperity of his people. 

But, while negotiations were still in progress, difficulties began, 
in consequence of the interference and chicanery of the whites, in 
the neighborhood of Green Bay, who strove to sow dissensions 
between the contracting parties, and neutralize the benevolent 
designs of President Monroe. They represented to the Menominies, 
that the New York Indians, in consequence of their superior know- 
ledge, had already overreached them, and were endeavoring to do 
so again ; and that, if they had sold the land to the government, 
they would have obtained far better conditions. But, notwith- 
standing their efforts, the treaty was concluded to the full satisfac- 
tion of the Menominies, who were most urgent with their eastern 
brethren to take immediate possession, that, by occupying the 
country, they might keep off of it the " long nails " of the white 
man. 

At a subsequent period, the Menominies were induced, by inter- 
ested persons, to deny their bargain with the New York Indians, 
on the plea that they had been overreached, and Mr. Williams was 
compelled to spend his time and substance to maintain their rights, 
against the efforts of knavish traders and intriguing statesmen. 
But, for the present, the evil hour was postponed ; and, as soon as 
he was settled at Green Bay, he began to look round him and 
examine the mixed elements of which society in the Indian terri- 
tory was composed, and take measures for the establishment (^ 
religious worship. 

His old friend and comrade in the war of 1812, Col. Pinkney, 
was in command of the garrison at Green Bay, and, together with 
his officers, received him with kindness. He had carried with him 
Mr. Ellis, for the purpose of instituting a school for the religious 



MARRlAaE AND ORDINATIOIT. 299 

education of the Indians. Still a layman, unmarried, with the world 
before him, he was under no obligation but that of a conscientious 
devotion to Christ, and affectionate regard for the Indians, to apply 
himself to missionary work, or remain at Green Bay. He might 
easily have gained wealth, had money been his object. He might 
have acquired political importance, had ambition been his ruling 
passion. But he was simply an enthusiast for the welfare of others. 
Immediately on his arrival at Green Bay, he held public service in 
the garrison, and, finding a respectable and increasing attendance 
on divine worship, made an appeal in February, 1823, to the officers 
of the post and the citizens, to provide a place of worship, which 
was promptly and cheerfully responded to. In a short time a neat 
chapel was fitted up in the garrison. Mr. Williams had the honor 
of being the first person who performed the service of the Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church west of Lake Michigan. But the religious 
instruction of the Indians was still uppermost in his mind. Only 
a few families had yet arrived from the State of New York, but a 
great many were expected, and he desired to be in readiness for their 
arrival. He accordingly opened a correspondence with the Mission- 
ary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church at Philadelphia. 
His plan was to erect a mission house, in which he would place, as 
superintendants, one of the most respectable Indian families, with 
accommodation for the boarding, lodging, and schooling of 100 
children, who were to be provided with gardens and fields for their 
amusement. He was, meanwhile, educating Mr. Ellis for the min- 
istry, and while prosecuting his studies, proposed that he should 
act as school-master to the mission, which was to embrace children 
of all the Indian tribes. At the same time exertions were made 
,by the officers and residents of Green Bay to effect the same object ; 
and, with the sanction of Bishop Hobart, and the recommendation 
of Gov. -Cass, application was made at the east, by Mr. Ellis, for 
funds to carry the design of Mr, Williams into effect, but owing to 
the illness of that gentleman, very little money was collected. 
Soon after his arrival at Green Bay, Mr. Williams had become 



300 THE LOST PRINCE. 

acquainted at tlie garrison with a young lady of French and In- 
dian extraction, named Magdeline Jourdan, of great personal attrac- 
tions, considerable accomplishments, and prepossessing sweetness 
of disposition. They were united in marriage at Green Bay, on 3d 
March, 1823. By his marriage with this lady, Mr. Williams came 
into possession of between 4 and 5,000 acres of land on the borders 
of the Fox Eiver, a few miles distant from Green Bay. In explana- 
tion of the manner in which Miss Jourdan became entitled to this 
fine propert}', I may remark that, among the Menominies, whilo 
in general the lands were common, certain tracts were held imme- 
morially, as hunting-grounds in particular families ; and at the time 
of the cession, by purchase, of a portion of their country to the New 
York Indians, reservation w^as made of these, by express treaty 
stipulation, for the benefit of the parties interested. The land in 
question was one of these tracts, and had long been the hunting- 
ground of the Jourdan family. To avoid all future doubt concern- 
■ ing the title to this property, it was, on the 22d August, 1825, made 
over to Mrs. Williams, by a deed from the chiefs, warriors, and 
head men of the Menominie nation, in which they say that, " for, 
and in consideration of their love and friendship for Magdeline 
Williams, and her heirs of the Menominie nation, and in consider- 
ation of the sum of fifty dollars, they gave, granted, bargained, sold, 
and quit-claimed " the said property, to her and her heirs for ever. 
In Article 9,-of the treaty of 1838, between Eansom H. Gillet, Com- 
missioner on the part of the United States and the chiefs of the 
New York Indians, this property was guaranteed to Mr. Williams, 
in fee simple, by patent from the President. Hereafter I shall have 
occasion to speak more on this subject; but here, I shall only beg 
the reader to remember that this property had no connection with 
any remuneration of Mr. Williams for services rendered to the 
Indians, but was his wife's estate, owned by her at the time of 
their marriage. 

In May, 1823, Mr. Williams Avrote to Bishop Hobart a report of 
■his proceedings and prospects of success, as a missionary at Green 



MARRIAGE AND ORDINATION. 301 

Bay, and applied for deacon's orders, which, at Oneida, he had ont 
of modesty declined, though strongly urged to enter the ministry 
by the Bishop. 

In the fall of 1823, considerable alarm existed in the minds of 
the New York Indians, respecting the validity of their claims on 
the lands ceded them, in consequence of the efforts of some 
government agents, at Green Bay, to create dissension between the 
two Indian tribes ; and it became necessary for Mr. "Williams to 
visit Washington, and confer with the President and the Secretary 
of War, in relation to the affair. He left Green Bay for this pur- 
pose, on November 1, and was entirely successful in his mission to 
the seat of government. The parties were still in power under 
whom the treaties had been made between the Indians, and 
prompt measures were taken to redress the ills of which the New 
York Indian's complained. 

Bishop Hobart was then absent in England, whither he had 
repaired for the benefit of his health, not long after the application 
of Mr. Williams for deacon's orders. During the bishop's absence, 
Mr. Williams was subject to severe annoyance in consequence of 
false, frivolous, and vexatious reports circulated to his discredit, 
the purport or the author of which he could not, for a long time, 
ascertain, but which, at length, were shown to emanate from a 
young person whom he had formerly befriended. The whole 
details of this affair have been preserved by Mr. Williams, and will 
form a curious chapter, if ever published, in the natural history of 
slander. He spent "the whole winter of 1823, and the winter, 
spring, and summer of 1824, in trying to ascertain the substance of 
false reports," during which time he had to travel about three 
thousand miles, and be at an expense of one thousand dollars, 
merely to find out that he was charged with a leaning to Roman- 
ism, and -other things equally absurd and unfounded. Among 
other means of defamation resorted to, was the circulation of a 
hand-bill, which drew forth a reply from the chiefs of the First 
Christian party, at Oneida, in which, after denying the truth of 



302 THE LOST PRINCE. 

everything alleged, tlTey say, " Mr. "Williams has heen among us ever 
since the year 1816, and his acts of kindness have been constant, 
and he has gratuitously ever since been doing us man}'^ and various 
services. We have looked to him as a friend and adviser, and he 
has conducted himself towards us, with the utmost fidelity and dis- 
interestedness, and yet these his acts, and this his conduct, is now 
to be misconstrued." 

Mr. Williams, during his residence at Green Bay, had officiated 
regularly to the garrison and the inhabitants, and raised,a numer- 
ous and respectable congregation, who were strongly attached to 
him. The attendance on divine service not unfrequently 
amounted to three hundred persons ; but his labors, with the 
exception of occasional gratuities from the officers, were without 
remuneration. He had no stipend, either from the congreation or 
any missionary society. His health again became infirm, and the 
weakness of his lungs increased, and as he had never designed to con- 
tinue in a ministerial capacity at Green Bay, itself, and the Oneidas 
were now rapidly arriving at the neighboring settlement of Duck 
Creek, where he intended to plant a church, he applied to the soci- 
ety, at Philadelphia, to send some clergyman to the station, who 
might take his place, and raise a school and mission for the instruc- 
tion of the Menominies. The Rev. Mr. Nash was accordingly 
appointed. The failure of this gentleman at Green Bay is well 
known to those acquainted with the history of the mission ; but 
everything was done by Mr. Williams, previous to his departure, for 
the east, where he purposed to spend the winter of 1825-6, to render 
him comfortable, and make his services efficient. In consequence of 
sickness, Mr. Williams remained at Oneida until the spring of 1826, in 
the midst of his friends, but at the same time exposed to the ungen- 
erous assaults of his enemies. To bring the attacks against him to 
immediate issue, he now applied for deacon's orders. The 
signatures to the canonical recommendations were of the most 
respectable kind, and the bishop appointed Oneida as the scene of 
his labors, and the residence of his enemies, for his ordination. 



MARRIAGE AND ORDINATION. 303 

At Vernon, on the evening preceding the ordination, Mr. Solomon 
Davis called, with several chiefs, on Bishop Hobart, and withdrew 
the charges he had made against Mr. Williams ; though I am sorry 
to add, that this gentleman has not ceased to blacken the reputation 
of a man every way his superior, and whose literary labors even he 
has not hesitated to pass for his own. A translation of the Prayer 
Book, published some years since, as the compilation of Mr. Solomon 
Davis, is the work of Mr. "Williams. The bishop, with the clergy 
who accompanied him, the Kev. Mr. Anthon, of Utica, the Eev. Mr. 
Bulkley, of Manlius, the Kev. Mr. Perry, of Rome, the Rev. Mr. 
Holister, of Paris, the Rev. Mr. Young, of Perriville, the Rev. Mr. 
Tread way, of New Hartford, the Rev. Mr. Griffin, of New York, and 
the Rev. Mr. Burgess, of Connecticut, were met at Vernon by a 
party of Oneida chiefs and others, and escorted to the church. Mr. 
Solomon Davis, catechist and lay reader, said the morning prayer. 
The bishop then made an address to the Indians, which was inter- 
preted to them. It has been preserved, and is an admirable speci- 
men of apostolic simplicity. At its conclusion, several of the chiefs 
advanced, each one placing his hand in token of assent on the right 
shoulder of the one who stood before him, and the foremost placing 
his hand upon the shoulder of Mr. Williams, who thus, as the repre- 
sentative of all, addressed the bishop on behalf of that portion of 
the Oneida nation who adhered to and designed to follow him to the 
west, praying him still to extend his paternal care over them, in 
spiritual things, after their departure to their distant and new home 
at Green Bay, to which the bishop affectionately responded. The 
address to the candidate for ordination was marked by all that 
fervor which was characteristic of the zealous bishop. " You are 
now," he said, " to make very solemn vows. You are to make them 
in the presence of Him who cannot be deceived, and who will not 
be mocked. You are to seal the sincerity with which you make, 
and the fidelity with which you mean to fulfil them, by partaking 
of the symbols of the body and blood of the Lord. Need I say to 
you — and what I say to you I say to my brethren and myself — how 



804 THE LOST PRINCE. 

treraendous the guilt, how horrible the punishment, if those vows 
be not made in sincerity, if those vows be not faithfully fulfilled. 
In an extensive region to the west, the greater portion of your coun- 
trymen will be gathered, advancing in all the arts of civilization 
and social life, under the guidance of that religion which best per- 
fects and secures every human blessing ; the time may come, when 
the descendants of those who once roamed, scattered bands, wild as 
the wilderness around them, which they Jiow behold bright with 
the fruitful fields, the populous villages, and the busy cities, of the 
more powerful, because civilized race, who possess the soil of which 
they once were lords, may take their stand, a compact, honored, 
independent body of enlightened freemen, in the highest ranks of 
their white brethren, and participate in all the inestimable blessings 
of those civil and religious institutions, which are the just pride of 
our happy country. You go forth to aid in this great, this glorious, 
this most benevolent design. You go forth, the first Indian vested 
by our church with that commission, without which no man can 
minister in holy things. God grant I may have cause to thank Him 
for making me the instrument of commissioning you to His service. 
Duties and difficulties you will have of no ordinary kind. To dis- 
charge those duties, and overcome those diflBculties, exert all your 
powers, and call forth that grace of God's Spirit, which you must 
constantly implore. Great your labors, great your diflBculties, but 
great also may be your reward. How great the reward in the view 
of your scattered, and in too many respects, degraded countrymen, 
rising to that rank in civil and in social life, for which God has 
designed them— what a transcendant reward in the prospect of the 
fulfilment to you of that gracious promise, ' they who turn many 
to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.' " 

"With these words ringing in his ears, the Sachem knelt at 
the feet of his friend and bishop, and received, in ordination, the 
apostolic laying on of hands. The prospect seemed, once more, 
bright before him, and, surrounded with the fruits and evidences 
of past labor, and with a heart beating high with hope of convert- 



REVERSES. 306 

ing into a smiling garden the western wilderness, which was to be 
the scene of his future toils, he rose to carry thither the cross and 
Gospel. 



CHAPTER XV. 



Armed with the ministerial commission, Mr. Williams returned to 
Green Bay, to spend his life in missionary labor, among the people 
he loved, who were now crowding to their new homes in the west. 
His position was peculiar. He was not merely the spiritual pastor 
of the Indians, but their secular champion. While a layman, he 
performed the duties of a clergyman ; and, when in the ministry, 
it was impossible for him, as the most intelligent person in the Six 
Nations, who had, also, been engaged in all late transactions between 
them and government, to cease defending the title to their newly 
acquired possessions. He was bound, in honor and duty, to fight 
for them, as he had been the chief instrument of government in 
withdrawing them from their old habitations; and they might well 
have accused him of treachery, had he tamely permitted them to 
be despoiled, by unprincipled politicians, of what was designed to 
be the magnificent heritage of their children. 

Y/hile the right of the Oneidas to the land purchased near Lake 
Michigan was still unquestioned, Mr. Williams induced them to 
erect a chapel at Duck Creek ; but, in the midst of their labors to 
establish themselves as a civil and religious community, the intelli- 
gence came that government was about to enter into a treaty with 
the Menominies. They were at no loss to foresee the bearing of 
such a treaty on themselves. On its face, it bore an attempt to 
defraud them of their possessions, and deny thevalidity of the treaties 
between thera and tlie Menominies, entered into with the sanction, 
and at the instigation of the United States Government. The then 
existing administration was bound by the acts of its predecessors ; 



306 THE LOST PRINCE. 

and General Cass, who had superintended the negotiations between 
the Indians of the east and west, was still governor of the north- 
western territor}^, and fully cognizant of all the details of those 
transactions, and of the integrity and good faith in which the New 
York Indians had obtained their lands at Green Bay. From its 
most incipient stage. General Cass had been, we may say, a party 
to the cession. On the 10th July, 1817, he wrote to E. Granger, 
Esq., Indian agent at Buffalo, " The government is friendly to the 
proposed cession. Were it otherwise, I should not consider myself 
at liberty to co-operate in the projected negotiation." In 1818, in 
a long letter to the Hon. D. A. Ogden, he represented the removal 
of the New York Indians to the west, as a change fraught with 
benefit to the government, on account of their civilization and 
proved fidelity, which would render them a barrier against the 
incursions of the savage tribes, and be the means of reclaiming them 
from barbarism. Mr. Trowbridge, who, by his appointment, had 
been present on behalf of the United States, at the treaty of 1821, 
had reported to him the whole proceedings, making mention, 
among other things, "of the correct moral deportment, and 
statesmanlike conduct of the deputies from the Six Nations, under 
the direction of Mr. Williams, whose personal exertions," he added, 
"have been very great." Mr. John Sergeant, jun., in making his 
report, of October 16, 1822, to General Cass, concerning the second 
treaty, in which an extension of the cession was obtained, says: — 
" Some of the French people in this place have taken much pains 
to create a party among the Menominies, to frustrate the designs of 
government^ and the New York Indians, in the aforesaid purchase, 
and have been entirely unsuccessful in their attempts ; and I have 
the pleasure, further to state, that the Menominies appear to be 
much pleased with the bargain and their new neighbors." So that, 
if ever there was a purchase made in good faith, it was that of the 
New York Indians, and General Cass knew it. 

" My fears in regard to the contemplated treaty with the Meno- 
minies," writes Mr. Williams, in his journal, " were at length fully 



REVERSES. 807 

realized. By a communication from government, I was informed 
that an appropriation had been made by Congress to carry the 
above into effect, and that General Cass and Colonel McKinney 
were appointed as commissioners ; the main object being to curtail 
the land conveyed to the New York Indians, as all the tract of 
country lying on the west side of Lake Micliigan must now soon 
be erected into a territory." 

Of all transactions in the history of the United States, 
the treaty of Butte des Morts is the most dishonorable. The 
commissioners, without asking the consent of the New York 
Indians, purchased from the Menominies the most valuable portion, 
including improved lands, of the tract, ceded by previous treaties 
to them, shutting them out entirely from access to the Fox river, 
from its mouth to the rapids of the Grand Kakalin. The Menomi- 
nies and the Winnebagoes were summoned to the council, and the 
New York Indians had to stand by and see their possessions 
wrested from them by the strong hand of power. After the treaty 
was opened. Governor Cass said, " We have observed for some 
time the Menominies to be in a bad situation as to their chiefs. 
There is no one we can talk to as head of the nation. If anything 
should happen, we want some man who has authority in the 
nation that we can look to. You appear like a flock of geese, with- 
out a leader, some fly one way and some another. To-morrow, at 
the opening of the council, we shall appoint a principal chief of the 
Menominies. We shall make inquiry this afternoon, and try to 
select the proper man. We shall give him the medal, and shall 
expect the Menominies to respect him." 

On August Y, two young men were called in front of the 
commissioners (one was named Oiscoss, alias Claw, the other was 
called Carron). Col. McKinney tben addressed them, and put 
medals round their necks, Oiscoss or Oskashe, as the name is 
spelled in the printed treaty, was made head chief, and the future 
organ of communication with the commissioners — and thus, by his 



308 THE LOST PRINCE. 

instrumentality, the property of the ISTew York Indians was given 
over to the United States. 

A short story which Mr. Williams once told me in conversation, 
will show who Oiscoss was, and what " a proper person " was 
found in him. 

One morning, at dawn of day, about a year previous to the 
treaty of Butte des Morts, a young half-breed Indian, who was a 
distant relative of Mrs. Jourdan, the mother-in-law of Mr. 
"Williams, was paddling in his canoe down Hell Creek, a branch of 
the Fox Eiver. It was still dark, so that objects could not be 
distinctly discerned. As he glided by the tall rushes growing near 
the bank, he observed them move, as if some animal was among 
them. Supposing it to be a deer, he fired at the spot where he 
saw the motion, and then paddled through an opening in the reeds 
to see the efiect of his shot. To his inexpressible horror, he found 
an Indian, in his canoe, which was half-drawn on shore, drooping 
lifelessly over the side of his bark, with a shot through his head. 
As the deed was accidental, he had no wish to conceal it, and put- 
ting the body in his own canoe, paddled down to Green Bay, to 
the encampment of Oiscoss, as the Indian killed belonged to his 
party. On landing, he went strait to Oiscoss, and informed him of 
what had happened, when Oiscoss, who was drunk at the time, 
drew his knife, and plunging it repeatedly into his body, continued 
stabbing him till he was dead. He was arrested for murder, but as 
he was a man of great influence among the Indians, was acquitted. 
But though he had escaped the law, there was another tribunal of 
a different kind to which he was still exposed. There is a tradi- 
tional institution among the Indians, very similar to the avenger of 
blood. Mrs. Jourdan, as the relative of the slain, and a medicine 
looman^ had only, according to the custom of the nation, to take a 
pipe and a war-club, and lay them down at the feet of any of the 
chiefs of Menorainies, and pronounce the name, " Oiscoss^'''' in 
order to insure a just and immediate retribution. When the day 



REVERSES. 309 

appointed for the council at Butte des Morts drew near, fearing, 
that unless he was reconciled with her, his life might.be taken, he 
proceeded to her house, acknowledged the murder, threw himself 
on her mercy, and implored pardon. It was granted, and the only 
punishment he received was the fierce invective which the eloquent 
tongue of an indignant woman could bestow. When he appeared 
at Butte des Morts, he was taken by a half-breed (L. G.) to the 
judge before whom he had been tried, and told, " There sits the 
man who saved your life — now do whatever he tells you." Such 
was the head chief, the medal man, " the proper person," of Butte 
des Morts, by whose influence, in a great measure, the lands of the 
New York Indians were consigned by the Menominies to the com- 
missioners. 

Many of the speeches delivered by the Indians, at Butte des 
Morts, and that by Mr. Dean, who spoke on behalf of the Six 
Nations, were taken down, at the time, by Mr. Polk, of Washing- 
ton, and Mr. Williams, and are yet preserved by the latter 
gentleman. The indignation and distress of the Oneida, Stock- 
bridge, and Brothertown Indians, was extreme. " Before we left 
the treaty ground," writes Mr. Williams, " it was proposed to me, 
by the whole delegation, to proceed to Washington and meet the 
treaty just concluded with the Menominies." An eloquent appeal 
and petition, from the Six Nations, was drawn up, and Mr. 
Williams set out for Washington, in the fall of 1827, to oppose the 
ratification of the treaty. He had the good fortune to interest Mr. 
Yan Buren, Mr. Benton, Mr. Calhoun, and other distinguished gen- 
tlemen, in the senate, in behalf of the New York Indians, and, by 
their kind exertions, the consummation of the proposed iniquity 
was prevented. Nothing, however, was done that session. As 
the hopes of the Six Nations depended on the efiPorts of Mr. 
Williams, it was of the utmost importance to those who desired the 
ratification of the treaty, to withdraw him from their canse, and a 
politic but fruitless appeal appears to have been made to his 
cupidity. He received the following letter from Gen. Cass : — 



310 THE LOST PRINCE. 

"Detroit, Jany. 29, 1828. 
" Dear Sir : — By the present mail I have written to the War Depart- 
ment, recommending your appointment as sub-agent, at Green Bay. I 
hope you will be appointed, 

" I am, dear sir, sincerely yours, 

" Lew. Cass. 
"Rev. E. Williams." 

So much anxiety was shown that he should get this, that two 
copies were sent, one to Washington, the other to the care of Ool. 
McKinney, by whom it was forwarded to Bishop Hobart, that it 
might reach him in New York. He was confined in that city, after 
the termination of the session, with a severe fit of sickness, and 
was not able to leave until June, 1828. He then returned to 
Washington, to inform the President, agreeably to a communica- 
tion he had received, that the Six Nations would consent to the 
ratification of the treaty, provided the claims of the New York 
Indians were allowed. 

In August, 1828, Mr. Williams was appointed, by the Missionary 
Society at Philadelphia, missionary to Duck Creek. His salary 
was $62,50 per quarter ; and for this munificent sum, he was not 
only to perform all the ordinary duties of a clergyman, but " to 
keep, or cause to be kept, without additional charge to the Society, 
a permanent school for the instruction of the children of the Oneida 
Indians, and such others as may desire iV He hired a teacher at a 
salary of $150 or $200 per annum, and the surplus constituted his 
own remuneration. All this time, and for years after, he had to 
defend the rights of the New York Indians at his own expense. It 
is necessary all this should be exposed, that the discouragements 
of every kind under which he labored may be seen. How many 
are there who would have labored on such conditions? Since 
his leaving Oneida, except occasional presents, at the option of the 
officers of the garrison at Green Bay, he had not received a farthing 
in the shape of salary from the Church. 

On the occasion of the appointment of Mr. Williams as mission- 



REVERSES. 311 

ary, the Indians at Duck Creek made an address to the Society, in 
which they say : 

" Fathers and Brothers. — We have hitherto hanged our heads down, 
and our hearts were sorrowful, because we were weak in our religious 
affairs. Our brother, who was disposed to instruct us in the ways of God, 
was weak also. No society encouraged him in his labor of love. We were 
grieved to see him thus situated. We were not able to aid him ; we 
vrere poor ourselves. We now raise our heads, and rejoice at the news that 
you have taken pity on us and our brother, by giving him such assistance 
as to enable him, in some measure^ to preach the Gospel to us ivithout 
laboring at the same time to maintain him^self.'''' 

Mr. Williams, too, in reporting his labors to the Society, returns 
them thanks, and offers the prayer that " the name of Jesus may 
be glorified, and all men may be blessed in Him, and all nations 
call him blessed." His health, however, continued infirm, and 
with difficulty he performed his ministerial duties, until the spring 
of 1830, when he began to amend. 

With the return of health he was once more called into the excit- 
ing and thankless scenes of political life. 

A new commission was appointed to negotiate with the Indians, 
and just prior to its meeting he received a visit from an old friend 
and school-mate, at Long Meadow, the Rev. Mr. Oolton, who 
records it in the first volume of his able work on the American 
Lakes. The account of Mr. Colton is interesting, as it presents a 
lively picture of the man in the scene of his labors and disappoint- 
ments ; gives a just idea of the simple grandeur which attaches to 
his person and character, and which no depression can efface ; and 
exhibits his lofty views and extensive plans for the amelioration of 
the condition of his supposed countrymen, which were all blighted 
by political dishonesty. It is also curious on other accounts. To do 
justice to it, the account of Prof. Oolton should be read as a whole. 
I can only furnish some brief extracts. Mr. Williams took his friend 
in a canoe up the Fox River, from his residence, and " as may be 



312 THE LOST PRINCE. 

imagined," says Mr. Oolton, " we talked over and lived again the 
scenes of childhood. ' And here we are, Mr. Williams. How 
strange! What a scene is this!' 

" ' Indeed, sir ; and did we dream of it when we ran around the 
brick school-house in the street of Long Meadow, and played our 
boyish pranks in that never-to-be-forgotten and delightful retreat?' 

" ' And do you remember the dress you wore when first your 
father brought you from Canada, and what infinite sport you and 
your brother John made for the children of the school, by the 
strangeness of your manners, and your Indian whims, before you had 
learned to accommodate yourselves to such a state of discipline?' 

" ' My memory,' said Mr. Williams, tapping his forehead with his 
finger, as much lihe a Frenchman as an Indian^ and winking a smile 
of great significance, 'records those scenes as if they were the 
occurrence of yesterday.' " 

This shows how, apart from any theory to suggest the idea, Mr. 
Williams bears the polite Frenchman in his very aspect and man- 
ner. The friends landed. "After being made acquainted," con- 
tinues Mr. Oolton, " with Mrs. Williams, who set before us refresh- 
ments, a walk was proposed and taken along the elevated brow of 
a sort of amphitheatre, overlooking the river, and enclosing a 
spacious and rich plain a little above the highest floods. It was 
indeed a beautiful and commanding eminence, itself the margin of 
another plain, stretching back under the sombre and apparently 
boundless orchard of oaks. ' Here,' said Mr. Williams, ' on this' 
spot, and along this line, I had fondly indulged the dream, would one 
day, not far distant, be founded and erected a literary and scientific 
seminary for the education of Indian youth. Next to the removal 
and establishment of our eastern tribes, in these delightful abodes 
of the northwest and along Fox Eiver, au4 such a confirmation of 
our privileges as to aiford a security for iiture exemption from the 
incursions of the white man, I had conceived and fondly cherished 
the project of this institution. This wide and beautiful country 
was to be our inheritance, in common with the tribes of whom w© 



REVERSES. 313 

purchased, and with whom we entered into friendly alliance, under 
the guidance and auspices of the President and Government of the 
United States. For the first time in the history of our public inju- 
ries, and of the successive ejectments of our tribes, from the east to 
the west, in the progress of two centuries, and of the gradual wast- 
ing away, of whole nations, as well as the constant diminution of 
these small remnants which still retain a name and existence — a 
fixed and permanent position was here pledged to us, and seemed 
to be gained without fear of disturbance. Here opened to our 
imagination and to our hope, and, I might add, to our sober judg- 
ment, a theatre for the regeneration of our race. And is there any 
hope, think you ? The lamp of hope has long since expired. "We 
can never move again. We have no courage. Our tribes have no 
courage. For where is the faith on which we can rely ? You shall 
see the state of things in the developments of the sittings of this 
commission.' " 

Well does Mr. Colton say, " These once hopeful instruments, and 
this individual man will have labored in vain, except as the disclosure 
and ascertainment of their injuries shall awaken a repentance and 
a sympathy in the bosom of that community, which ought long ago 
to have thrown in the shield of its protection, and saved the Indians 
from these disasters, and even then, such a man as Mr. Williams 
cannot be raised from the grave ; or if he should be among the living 
(which is not very probable), a state of health worn out, and a con- 
stitution broken down by these cares ; a mind originally mgorous 
and heroic^ but the courage of which has been well nigh subdued by 
this irresistible accumulation of calamity, over the heads of his race 
— would require little less than a miracle to fit him to cherish again 
the hopes, and again to wield the burden of such an enterprise, as 
he must have the credit of having once conceived. ' May a Ph(Bnix 
yet arise from the ashes of his hopes consumed^ and wing its way to a 
drighter destiny.' To this I say amen." 

To dispossess the Indians, and erect a new state upon the ashes 
of their council-fires, was now the firm resolution of interested polt- 

U 



314 THE LOST PRINCE. 

ticians. All things seem to be considered fair in politics — concience 

is a jest, and expediency the rule of action. Dissensions, which 
never would have existed among the Indians, but for foreign inter- 
ference, had been created, and since, if the poor people were left to 
themselves, their differences would soon have died out, they were 
diligently fomented. The treaty of Butte des Morts had been the en- 
tering wedge. Something had been accomplished. A claim had been 
set up to the effect that, even after the sanction of treaties between 
the Indians, by the President, they were capable of being set aside 
by him ; and now, in August, 1830, a commission, consisting of 
Erastus Root, John Gr. Mason, and James McCall, was sent to Green 
Bay, on the plea of arbitrating between the Menouiinies, and the 
Six Nations, which terminated in an invitation being extended to 
the pretended disputants, to send representatives to "Washington, that 
the President, out of his paternal love and wisdom, might compose 
their differences. Mr. Williams was then dragged off again, by 
political chicanery, from the scene of his ministerial labors. On 
their way the representatives had an interview with Gov. Cass, at 
Detroit, in which speeches were made by the Menominie chiefs, com- 
plimentary to their father the Governor, and their father Colonel 
Stambough, the United States agent, and their great father the Pre- 
sident. The New York Indians, with a better understanding of 
their position, were as guarded in their compliments as courtesy 
would permit. Mr. Williams merely acted as interpreter. On this 
occasion Gen. Cass gave him the following letter, which I insert, as 
an honorable testimony to the worth of Mr. Williams, by a person 
who has recently made an anonymous attempt to injure his reputa- 
tion, in the " New York Herald," and hold him up as an impostor 
to the scorn and ridicule of Christendom. 

'■'■Detroit, December 5, 1830. 

" Sir : — The Green Bay agency is the most important upon this frontier, 

both with respect to the number and character of the Indians. It embraces 

three distinct tribes, the Winnebagoes, the Menominies, and the New York 

Indians, all speaking languages radically di^erent. Besides these, there are 



REVERSES. 315 

scattered bands of the Chippewas, Ottawas. and Pottawatomies, who reside 
within the limits of the agency, and resort to the agent for aid and advice. 
Col. Stambough is determined to revive the affairs of the agency, and leave 
no means untried to place them in a situation commensurate with their 
importance. He should have a Winnebago, a Menominie, and an Oneida 
interpreter, together with one sub-agent at the Bay, and one up the Fox 
River. The latter is already filled, but should any event render the appoint- 
ment vacant I beg leave to recommend the Rev. Eleazar Williams, as a 
proper person to fill the vacancy. This gentleman is an Episcopal clergy- 
man of very respectable standing, and partly descended from the Iroquois 
Indians. He rendered essential services to the United States during the late 
war, in which he was actively engaged, and badly wounded ; the effects of 
which will probably continue during life. I understand he enjoyed the con- 
fidence of some of our highest and most distinguished officers, and bravely led 
a heavy column at the battle of Plattsburg. He is a gentleman of educa- 
tion and talents, and, from his position and association, can render hnportant 
services to the government and the Indians. 

"Lewis Cass. 
"Hon. John H. Eaton, Secretary of War.'''' 

The delegates from the Indian tribes arrived at Washington, and 
were quartered at one of the principal hotels. And now began a 
scene of fresh political profligacy. While the ISTew York Indians 
were amused witli the idea of submitting their differences with the 
Menominies to the arbitration of the President, a treaty, without 
their knowledge or consent, was actually entered into by John H. 
Eaton, Secretary of War^jjnd E. 0. Stambough, Indian agent, on 
the part of the United States, and the ignorant and savage Meno- 
minie chiefs, in which the rights of the Six Nations from New 
York, were entirely denied, and the Menominies, on the ground 
that they Tiad not yet disposed of any of their lands^ sold to the 
United States two million five hundred thousand acres of land, con- 
senting, as a favor^ that five hundred thousand acres should be 
appropriated to the New York Indians, whose delegates, with every 
token of humiliation, as intruders and robbers, were called in to 
witness this very cool disposition of their property, besides which, 



316 THE LOST PRINCE. 

in token, that even the small tract allotted to them was held in suf- 
ferance from the United States, the government were to pay the 
Menominies twentj-five thousand dollars for it, becoming thus 
proprietors of tlie lands of the New York Indians, by purchase, 
and having the power, on this plea, at any time, to dispossess them. 

The contest of parties on this question ran high, for the New 
York Indians were not without powerful and able friends, who 
rightly appreciated the injustice done to them. Mr. Williams and 
. Mr. Quiney, delegate from the Stockbridge Indians, exerted them- 
selves to the utmost, to cause the defeat of the treaty in the senate, 
which they had the satisfaction of seeing accomplished. The 
senate also refused to confirm the appointment of Col. Stambough, 
and the session of 1830-31 closed without anything having been 
effected towards the settlement of the difficulties. 

All this time, Mr. Williams was suffering from severe indisposi- 
tion, which, after his leaving Washington, increased with such 
violence as to detain him at Oneida during the summer, and here 
his scanty means gave out, and he was under the humiliating 
necessity of appealing to the clergy of the church for assistance to 
enable him to return home. Bishop Onderdonk furnished him with 
the following testimonial, which I insert as proof both of his mis- 
fortunes and his sacrifices. 

" Eudson, June 13, 1831. 
" The bearer, the Rev. Eleazar Williams, having by various expendi- 
tures, while in the spiritual service of his brethren, the aborigines of our 
country, and in consequence of long and severe indisposition, become 
seriously embarrassed in his circumstances, is hereby respectfully and 
aflectionately commended to the Christian beneficence of the members of 
our communion. I also introduce him to my clerical brethren generally, 
as a clergyman of respectable standing and attainments, and good, moral, 
and religious character. 

" Benj. T. Onderdonk. 
"Bishop of the Diocese of New York." 

The pecuniary benefit of this application was about sixty dollars. 



• REVERSES. 317 

Unable to fulfil his engagements with the Missionary Society of 
Philadelphia, iu consequence of ill health, and enforced absence, he 
resigned his station of missionary at Duck Creek. His old friend, 
Mr. Solomon Davis, now contrived to prejudice the mind of Bishop 
Gnderdonk against him, by accusing him of officiating at Oneida, 
without his permission, althougli he had expressly granted that 
'permission^ and the bishop supposing, of course, that the represen- 
tation was correct, rebuked Mr. Williams for violation of the 
canons. 

The pen almost grows weary with recording, even in the briefest 
manner, the troubles, disappointments, injuries, and insults heaped 
on this suffering man. From first to last, it is impossible to 
discover any instance in which he departed from the strict course 
of duty and honor. All who have aided to increase the burdens 
of his life, have, at some period, borne witness to his worth. But 
the complicated web of wrong, goes on steadily increasing to the 
end, and some of the last developments of injustice are among the 
strangest. 

"When the session of 1831-2 opened, it was necessary for hira 
again to repair to Washington, to advocate the cause of his coun- 
trymen, in company with the other delegates of the Six Nations. 
An able memorial was drawn up to the Senate of the United 
States, setting forth the rights and grievances of the New York 
Indians ; but, though the hardships of their situation were felt, the 
necessities of a tortuous policy were too compelling to permit full 
justice to be done ; and the treaty of 1831, with the Menorainies, 
was finally ratified, on June 25, with the addition of a saving 
clause in favor of the New York Indians, which, though it did not 
alter the amount of land assigned them by the treaty, gave them 
somewhat more favorable terms in respect to location of lands, 
payment for improvements, and acknowledgment of individual 
rights. During this session, worn down in health and spirits, and 
reduced to poverty, Mr. Williams, having achieved all he could, was 
compelled to abandon the long contest and retire from the delega- 



318 THE LOST PEINCE. 

tion. Efforts were, however, made by his friends to create 
sympathy in the church, in his behalf, and Bishop Onderdonk, 
with prompt kindness, summoned a missionary meeting, at Christ 
Church, New York, on 7th April, 1832, in which energetic appeals 
were made to the benevolence of the church, to sustain the 
mission, at Duck Creek — but, like most affairs of the kind, there 
was more sound about it than substance, and the small collection 
made on the occasion, and the few dollars Mr. "Williams obtained 
in Connecticut and Western New York, were of little permanent 
benefit to the mission. J'eeliug his physical inability for exertion, 
he was anxious to retire from the station, but agreed to continue in 
it for one year, at the request of the bishop. At this time, he was 
to have been admitted to priest's orders, from which, out of diffi- 
dence, he had hitherto abstained, but the approach of the cholera 
hastened his return to the west, that he might be at his post 
provided the pestilence attacked his people. 

On his return to Green Bay, Mr. Williams found that, during his 
absence, many evils had crept into the little flock he had been 
compelled to leave untended, in spiritual things, while struggling 
to preserve their temporal rigkts. Drunkenness, dissension, and 
immorality prevailed ; parties had been raised, and everything was 
in a state of disorder. It became, in his estimation, his indispen- 
sable duty, with the consent of the religious portion of the congre- 
gation, to subject the refractory and immoral members to disci- 
pline, and among them, it was his painful task to include one who 
had been united with him in the delegations to Washington, and in 
the efforts of years to obtain justice for the Indians. I do not 
understand the principle on which a deacon or a congregation 
could excommunicate — but this, at the worst, was a failure in 
judgment, although Bishop Hobart, in former years, knowing the 
necessity of preserving order among such a lawless class of people, 
had permitted Mr. Williams to act in such matters at his. discretion. 
Bishop Onderdonk was informed of what had been done, and of 
the crime by which the peace of two families had been broken 



REVERSES. 319 

up — which had caused the excommunication of the individual 
especially referred to. Much happened at this time, which I 
refrain from chronicling, because it is not necessary for the vin- 
dication of Mr. Williams, and the bare statement of facts might 
seem to imply censure in quarters to which there is no antagonism, 
as, doubtless, there was no design of committing injustice. 

On the 8th September, 1833, Mr. Williams, finding the dissensions 
among the congregation, growing out of the act of discipline, could 
not be allayed, and having neither heart nor strength to contend 
with those to whose service he had devoted his life, resigned his 
charge, and preached his farewell discourse, which he concluded 
thus : — " Brethren of the communicants of St. Thomas Church, I 
now bid you farewell. Live in peace, and the God of peace be 
with you. Remember that the eyes of Heaven and earth are upon 
you. How holy is your calling — how solemn your profession — how 
delightful your service— how rich your reward. Eelax not in any 
duty. We must now separate, and you hear my last words. If 
you have discerned anything of the Saviour in me, imitate it. 
What you have seen in me contrary to the spirit of the Gospel 
reject it. I was set for your spiritual guide, but now my work is 
done. Though the cause of our separation be unpleasant, I shall 
rejoice to see you walking in the truth. Discipline is the life of a 
church. We have endeavored to reclaim offenders. It is to be 
hoped that the delinquents will come to sober reflections and 
repentance. What I have done, in this respect, I have done from 
the purest motives. Let us pray for one another, and give all dili- 
gence that we may arrive at our Father's home. All is not lost, 
though your friend and pastor is gone. God and His promises 
remain to comfort you ; and beyond the grave is a state of peace 
where Christian friends will part no more." 

If ever there was a man who had proved he had at heart the tem- 
poral and spiritual welfare- of his people, and his desire to spend and 
be spent for them, it was Mr. Williams. During his whole career, 
us a religious teacher, both before and after his ordination, it is not 



320 THE LOST PRINCE. 

too much to say, that he had labored without remuneration — for the 
paltry sums he had received cannot be set in the balance against his 
immense pecuniary sacrifices. It was his misfortune to be the pastor 
of a semi-barbaric race, who, as a general thing, are not noted for 
gratitude, nor truthfulness, and who were surrounded by those whose 
interest it was to foment discontent, at a time when political con- 
tentions, social disasters, and change of residence, rendered them 
refractory, immoral, and restless. But, it is to his honor that, not- 
withstanding all the ingratitude he has met with at the hands of 
the Indians, he has never ceased to love, and desire to serve them, 
feelings which continue unabated to the present hour, when in 
advanced life he is still laboring for them as a missionary. 

He had now nothing left but to retire to his farm on the Fox 
Eiver, and in peace and solitude recruit his health, worn down 
by fatigue, anxiety, and sorrow. He celebrated Christmas, 1833, 
with a few Indians, at his farm, and his journal for that year closes 
with an ascription of praise to God : " Blessed be the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spi- 
ritual blessings in Him, and granted us to enjoy the day which the 
patriarchs foresaw, the prophets foretold, and the righteous men 
of the earth desired. Hosanna to the Son of David, who comes in 
the name of the Lord." 

The winter, spring, and summer, passed rapidly away, when his 
thoughts once more turned toward his brethren at St. Regis, and, 
as he had not seen his reputed parents for a long time, he bent his 
steps thither. As his family and all his means of subsistence were 
at Green Bay, he did not purpose a permanent residence in the 
State of New York, but thought he might be instrumental in found- 
ing an Indian Protestant school which others might conduct. 

In October, 1834, he left Green Bay, but being taken sick on his 
journey, did not reach St. Regis until December. The winter and 
spring were spent at Albany, under the care of a physician ; and in 
June, 1835, feeling himself stronger, he returned to St. Regis, with 
the design of establishing his proposed school. He stated his views 



REVERSES. 321 

to some English and American gentlemen at St. Regis, Ilogansburg, 
and Cornwall, and, with their co-operation and encouragement, 
undertook the task. He was, soon after, appointed, by Lord 
Aylmer, Governor-General of Canada, one of the government 
schoolmasters ; and, notwithstanding the opposition of the Komish 
clergy, the school increased in numbers and prosperity. 

But, his labors soon received an unexpected check, in conse- 
quence of receiving information from James Hughes, Esq., the 
Indian agent, that as a government schoolmaster, it was his duty 
"to tell the children that they were brought up in the Roman 
Catholic faith, that they had a missionary to instruct them in their 
religious duties, and should listen to his advice in regard to reli- 
gion." Mr. Williams, in consequence, at once resigned his situa- 
tion under the British government. " Christian sincerity and 
plainness of speech," he wrote to the Indian agent, " require me to 
say that, I cannot exhort the pupils who may be committed to my 
charge to attend the ministrations of a Popish priest. As a Pro- 
testant clergyman, and that, too, under a Protestant government, 
to be compelled to do this, I should regard as infringing upon the 
liberty of conscience which I have hitherto enjoyed." Under tliese 
circumstances, he wrote to inform Bishop Onderdonk, of his condi- 
tion, praying for assistance that he might go on with the school, and 
preach the Gospel to the Indians. " My circumstances," he said, 
" have been this year exceedingly straightened, as I have been 
putting all my resources in requisition to maintain the school. Be 
assured, right reverend sir, that this request is made as a last resort, 
after having done what I could." The bishop, however, was 
unable to afford him any assistance. It is deplorable to reflect that 
the American church was too poor to uphold a man so conscientious 
and so desirous to perform his duty. 

The Governor-General, in accepting the resignation of Mr. Wil- 
liams, testified his sense " of the goodness and purity of the motives 
which induced him to offer it." The Rev. Mr. Archibald, of Corn- 
wall, who throughout had been his firm friend, wrote to him on 

14* 



322 THE LOST PRINCE. 

the occasion of his resignation. " I confess to you, my Rev. Brother, 
that I am glad to be rid of the patronage of the Government here. 
Whilst it continued you were in trammels. Now you are independ- 
ent, and have only to look to the Lord Jesus as the Supreme Head, 
and if we seek His glory success must inevitably attend our exertions. 
God bless you." By the aid of Mr. Archibald, Mr. Ohesley, and 
other friends, the school was kept in operation, and soon attained 
a flourishing condition, when in June, 1836, his health broke down, 
in consequence of confinement and want of exercise, and his domes- 
tic concerns required his presence at Green Bay. These causes, but 
above all, the approach of another government treaty with the 
Indians for the sale of their lands, compelled him to abandon his 
new field of labor and return to the west.- His presence was 
required both by the Government and the Indians ; for, however a 
portion of the latter might assail him in periods of quiet, they were 
sure to call for his assistance in the hour of danger, and that assist- 
ance was never withheld. 

As much of the affliction of Mr. Williams in late years has grown 
out of this treaty, I will briefly recount the whole series of involved 
transactions up to the present time, referring the reader to the 
Appendix for the documentary evidence. Mr. Williams wishes no 
concealment, but desires to have all obscurity cleared away from his 
dealings with the Indians, and his treatment by Government and 
individuals. He has not obtruded himself nor his concerns on the 
public, but as events have taken the course they have, and even his 
misfortunes and wrongs have been tortured into evidence against 
him, in some instances by those he deemed friends, there is no 
remedy but to lay bare the whole. If there be inaccuracy as to 
facts, it is an easy matter tot the parties concerned to point it out. 

The final treaty between the Government of the United States 
and the New York Indians, was begun on 16th Sept., 1836, at Duck 
Creek, J. F. Schermerhorn acting as Commissioner onbehalf of the 
Government, and was continued, at Buffalo, on 15th Jan., 1838, the 
name of Ransom H. Gillet being added to the Commission, which, 



REVERSES. 323 

in the treaty there made and concluded, adopted, as its basis, the 
provisions of the previous treaty at Duck Creek, which related 
solely to the Oneidas and the St. Regis Indians, while the additional 
articles then entered into, referred to the Senecas and other 
branches of the Six Nations. 

When the treaty was brought up for ratification in the Senate, in 
1840, the name of J. F. Schermerhorn, who had been the principal 
and almost sole agent of the Government in the transaction, was 
omitted or erased from the treaty, it is supposed, in consequence 
of fears that his unpopularity with the Senate would defeat its 
passage, and the name of Ransom H. Gillet left, as if he had been 
the sole commissioner. 

The first eight articles of the treaty consist of " general pro- 
visions," respecting the cession, by the New York Indians, on certain 
specified conditions, of the whole land possessed by them in the 
neighborhood of Green Bay, with the exception of reserved tracts. 
The remaining six articles of the treaty contain " special provisions" 
for the different branches of the Six Nations and the St. Regis Indians. 

The ninth article consists of special provisions for the St. Regis 
Indians, and contains two clauses ; the first, relative to the payment 
and mode of distribution of certain moneys to the tribe, as, 1, a 
remuneration for moneys laid out, and, 2, for services rendered by 
their chiefs and agents in securing the title to the Green Bay lands, 
the sole chief and agent who rendered such services being the Rev. 
Eleazar Williams, who signed the treaty ; and the second clause, 
securing to Mr. Williams a reservation of land on the bank of the 
T-ox River, consisting of 4,800 acres, being his wife's estate previous 
to marriage, and of which the chiefs of the Menominie nation gave 
her a quit-claim deed in 1825, under which Mr. Williams claimed it 
in the territorial adjustment between the United States and the 
Indians. Before an acre of land had been sold by the Winnebagoes 
or Menominies to the Six Nations, this estate was the peculium of 
the Jour dan family, and had been held sacred by all parties as 
private property. Its introduction into the treaty of 1838, was only 



324 THE LOST PRINCE. 

for the purpose of solemnly confirming an individual right previously 
existing ; and in no shape or manner can it be considered as a dona- 
tion from Government to Mr. Williams, except tliat the Government 
having, through its commissioner, the disposition of technicalities, 
threw it into the form of a patent grant, thus, in appearance, giving 
away what did not belong to it. Appendix K. 

At the time, however, when the treaty was made, there was an 
express understanding that four out of five thousand dollars, cove- 
nanted to be paid by Government to the St. Regis Indians, " on their 
removal west, or at such other time as the President should appoint," 
was to remunerate Mr. Williams for his long and arduous services, 
as agent for the St. Regis Indians ; and to avoid all dubiety on the 
subject, either as to the fact or as to the amount, the commissioner, 
J. F. Schermerhorn, certified the same to the President, under date 
of July 10, 1888, and the paper is among the Indian ofiice files at 
Washington, marked W. 572. Green Bay, 1888. Appendix L. 

In this paper it is candidly acknowledged, by Mr. Schermerhorn, 
that to the persavering efforts of Mr. Williams, the preservation of 
the lands of the ISTew York Indians was -attributable. All the Six 
Nations were thus indebted to him. But he had acted especially as 
the agent of the two parties with whom he was most closely con- 
nected, viz. the St. Regis and the Oneida Indians. For his services 
and expenditures, in behalf of the former, provision was mad« to 
remunerate him, in the treaties of Duck Creek and BuflEalo. But 
while the latter treaty was in progress, a certain portion of the 
Oneidas became discontented with the course things were taking, 
and went to Washington to make a separate agreement for them- 
selves. Mr. Van Buren appointed Carey A. Harris, as commissioner, 
to treat with them. By him, a treaty was made with the first 
Christian and Orchard parties of the Oneida Indians, residing at 
Green Bay, by which all their improvements, and 100 acres for 
each individual, amounting in all, to 75,000 acres, were secured to 
them out of the wreck. In this treaty, provision was made to remu- 
nerate the chiefs and agents of the Oneidas, and five thousand dol- 



REVERSES. 825 

lars was apportioned to Mr. Williams, although his claim,' admitted 
to be just, by the commissioner, amounted to eight thousand dollars 
more. What is observable in this case is, that the wording of this 
treaty, under which Mr. Williams was allowed, and paid five thou- 
sand dollars for his services to the Oneidas, is precisely the same 
as that of Buffalo Creek, by which he was to receive four thou- 
sand dollars for services to the St. Regis Indians, with the additional 
security, in the latter case, of a certificate of his right, according to 
agreement, from the commissioner to the President. 

One thousand dollars out of the five thousand dollars mentioned in 
the ninth article of the Buffalo treaty, was, according to stipulation, 
in a supplementary article of said treaty, paid over to the St. Regis 
Indians ; the remaining four thousand dollars, being, according to their 
desire, at the time, reserved for Mr. Williams. Of this fact W. L. 
Gray, the interpreter, has given two affidavits. " They refused," 
he says, " to receive the whole of the five thousand dollars, because 
they knew that four thousand dollars of that money had been pro- 
mised to Mr. Eleazar Williams, bijt they accepted and received one 
thousand dollars of the five thousand dollars, as may be seen in the 
supplemental article of the treaty." 

The money thus due to Mr. Williams, remained unpaid for a num- 
ber of years, no appropriation for the purpose having been made by 
Congress, when on June 17, 1850, the chiefs and warriors of the 
American party of the St. Regis Indians, addressed a petition to the 
President, in his behalf, stating that they had no claim whatever to 
this money, which was due to him as their agent, that he had 
expended a large sum in their behalf, and that the commissioner, Mr. 
Schermerhorn had certified his right. " Mr. Williams," they say, 
" is entitled to receive the four thousand dollars, as he has honorably 
fulfilled the stipulations of the treaty." " We have been remunerated 
for the moneys expended by the tribe — but not so with our agent, 
and we hope the four thousand dollars, as before stated, will be no 
longer withheld from him. He is the only person of our tribe who 
has rendered any service in procuring the Green Bay lands." 



326 THE LOST PRINCE. 

One would think if ever there was a clear case of right and jus- 
tice it was this. But we shall see here how the most stainless cha- 
racters may be assailed at the very moment the foulest injury is 
done to them. I shall not permit myself to utter a word of com- 
ment on the following facts. That I leave to the puhhc. 

In the month of January, 1851, the Hon. E. H. Gillet, wrote from 
"Washington the following letter to John L. Eldridge, Esq., of Hogans- 
burg. To avoid any charge of misrepresentation, or any temptation 
to remark, I give it entire in the text 

" Washington, January 5, 1851. 

'* Dear Sir : — I have just ascertained that Messrs. Bryon and Cochrane, 
Indian Claim Agents of this city, have succeeded in obtaining from the 
government of the United States certain moneys stipulated, by the treaty of 
1838, to be paid to the Oneidas in New York. They are willing to make 
an eifort to obtain payment of the $4,000 due the St. Eegis Indians, the 
payment of which depends upon the action of the President. An appro- 
priation has been made for the Oneidas, but none has been made for the 
St. Eegis. 

" The commission they propose, in this case, is the same that they 
received in that of the Oneidas, where it has been made, and the services 
much less. Presuming that it would be for their interest to employ agents 
here, as skilful and as responsible as I know these men to be, I have 
sketched the draught of a memorial and power of attorney for the St. 
Regis, which I forward to you, as their agent and ally, under the laws of 
the State of New York, presuming that you would, as such, or indivi- 
dually, obtain their signatures, and forward them to these gentlemen, 
CO represent them. Seals should be attached to the power of attorney, 
and both should be signed by all the chiefs of the American party, in 
the presence of a magistrate, who should take an acknowledgment as 
of a deed of law, and his official capacity be certified by the county 
clerk. Then there should be an affidavit of yourself, as local agent, 
that you know that those who sign are the only chiefs living qj; the time. 
It would be well for the trustees, as such, to approve the memorial and 
power, and recommend the commissioner of Indian affairs to con 



REVERSES. 



827 



firm the prayer of the chiefs, and to confirm their doings. If the chiefs 
have all died out, so that there are none to sign, then you should make 
affidavit of that fact, and let the papers be modified so as to read tnistess._. 
instead of chiefs. Great pains should be taken to make them understand 
the matter, so as to leave no chance of complaint, by them or any one 
else. It is important that this be all attended to immediately, so that 
proper steps may be taken to get an appropriation, which may be attended 
with some difficulty. Priest Williams is said to have a power of some 
sort, but informal and insufficient. But, without prompt and decisive 
movements, he will either get, and perhaps keep the money ; but, if he 
cannot do so, he will be likely to try to defeat an appropriation, until he 
thinks his chances better. Personally, I have no interest in this matter, but, 
owing to my relation to the treaty, and the friendly terms I am on with the 
tribe, I will do what I can, fireely, for them. If the papers are properly 
and correctly made, and forwarded to Messrs. Bryon and Cochrane, of this 
city, and they collect the money, they will retain, say twenty dollars, to 
reward you for your trouble and expenses, and remit it in any form you may 
direct. You had better engross the papers I send you, in a better hand- 
writing than mine. If the papers are promptly sent to Messrs. B. and C, 
I have no doubt that, before spring, the St. Eegis will get their money, 
which will greatly help them, and add to the cirmdating medium in your 
vicinity. I am here attending court, but return to New York soon. 
Whenever I am here, I shall cheerfully lend a hand, without reward, to 
aid my St. Regis friends. Should you be unable to attend to this matter, 
you had better employ some one on the proposed terms, and thus have it 
speedily disposed of. Yours truly, 

" R. H. GiLLET. 

" John S. Eldridge. 
" P. S. The money for the Indians, beyond the attorney's fees, will, pro- 
bably be remitted by the U. S. sub-agent. It does not usually go into 
the hands of the attorney who prosecutes the claim. But if it does, B. 
and C. are responsible and safe men. H. H. G." 

The facts in the case, then, and I shall confine myself to evident 
facts, are these, that after the St. Regis Indians had solemnly 
renounced all right and title to the $4,000 in favor of Mr. Williams, 



328 THE LOST PRINCE. 

the Hon. R. H. Gillet, being aware of Mr. Williams's claim, made 
efforts to induce those Indians to apply for the money, promised 
Mr. Eldridge $20 on behalf of Messrs. Bryon and Oochraae, if he 
would undertake the business, held out to him the further induce- 
ment that the $4,000 would increase the circulating medium in his 
vicinity, and made out with his own hands the necessary documents 
for the Indians to sign. I do not say a word to impugn his per- 
fect honor and disinterestedness. That is a question I will not touch. 
My only aim is to vindicate the character of Mr. Williams; but I 
cannot help questioning whether Mr. Gillet will ever write Mr. 
Eldridge a similar letter. Appropriation was made by Congress in 
the session of 1851-2 for the payment of the $4,000 in question; 
and, on the 2Yth January, 1853, Stephen Osborn, of Buffalo, was 
appointed commissioner to appropriate the money to the several 
claimants, according to the provisions of the treaty ; and, on the 3d 
April, he reported to the office of Indian affairs, that he could " not 
come to any conclusion with the chiefs, they insisting that the 
entire amount should be paid to the American party of the Indians, 
while it is very evident," he writes, " to me, that the Rev. Eleazar 
Williams is entitled to the greater part, if not the whole of this 
money, under the facts and upon a just construction of article nine 
of the treaty." In this condition of affairs, the Indian bureau very 
naturally referred to the Hon. R. H. Gillet, for information " rela- 
tive to the nature of the Rev. E. Williams's claim," and "for such 
facts connected with the subject within his remembrance, as would 
enable the department to pay over the money as was intended when 
the treaty was made." This honorable gentleman, therefore, the 
writer of the letter to Mr. Eldridge, communicated to the office of 
Indian affairs the information, that a "liberal if not extravagant 
provision" of land, worth, at the time, $10,000, by governmeat 
valuation, was intended, at the time of making the treaty, "to 
indemnify him for the past, if he had claims, and to secure such 
action by him and the St. Regis tribe, as would vest in the govern- 
ment their interest in the half million acres of very valuable land ;" 



EE VERSES. 329 

and concludes by saying, " I cannot see that Mr. "Williams has spe- 
cial claims upon the fund, after receiving his valuable reservation, 
which certainly was equal to the value of any services rendered by 
him. A commissioner may well assent to its being divided per 
capita among those who constituted the American party of the 
tribe." The hesitancy with which Mr. Gillet speaks ought to have 
induced further inquiry. It was a question of aye or no. What 
was the intention at the time of making the treaty? Either Mr. 
Williams had claims or he had not claims. Mr. Gillet dare not 
deny that he had claims, but he could not see that he had " special 
claims," and things that a " commissioner may well assent,'' &c. 
The private property of Mrs. Williams, previous to her marriage, 
and which, according to the wording of the treaty of 1838, Mr. 
Williams claimed in his own right and in that of Ms wife, is repre- 
sented by Mr. Gillet as an extravagant remuneration for his ser- 
vices. No wonder that the Governmeut of the United States 
should enjoy a reputation for economy, if it can always purchase 
services like those of Mr. Williams, at the expense of the parties 
who render them. The result of the affair was, that Mr. Osborn 
was dismissed, another commissioner appointed, and the $4,000 
belonging to Mr. Williams paid over by government to the 
very Indians, who, previous to the interference of Mr. Gillet, had 
renounced all right and title to it. The reader has, doubtless, 
heard of pecuniary difficulties between Mr. Williams and the 
Indians at St. Regis, and the great prejudices in their honest minds 
against him. He is now in a position to judge whether anything 
discreditable can be laid to his charge. If there be, he challenges 
investigation. 

There is another transaction, of a pecuniary nature to which I 
should liave made no allusion, had it not been officiously, offen- 
sively, and incorrectly brought before the public by a soi-disant 
friend of Mr. Williams, and for no reason, that I can see, except to 
display his personal acquaintance with one who was then a topic 
of general conversation, and whose character he took occasion in a 



330 THE LOST PRINCE. 

public lecture, ybr which he received payment^ to traduce, while com- 
pelled to confess that he knew nothing of him but what was favor- 
able. I allude to Dr. Lothrop, an Unitarian minister of Boston. 
I copy the following passage from the appendix and notes to a 
recent edition of the Redeemed Captive, by Dr. Stephen Williams, 
whose remarks on the life of Mr. Williams I shall have occasion, 
hereafter, to criticise. It has been circulated extensively through 
the country by the daily press. " The Christian Register," of Feb. 
26, 1853, published at Boston, says : " The Rev. Dr. Lothrop, of 
this city, delivered a lecture on Monday evening, before the Mercan- 
tile Library Association, on the lost Dauphin, in which he examined 
the claims of the Rev. Eleazar Williams. The speaker had known 
Mr. Williams for twelve years, visisted him in 1845 at his residence 
in Wisconsin, and received two visits from him in Boston. In his 
opinion there is not a particle of evidence in Mr. W.'s favor, except 
what depends upon his 'say so.' " The Transcript, from which we 
take the statement, gives the following interesting report on one 
portion of it. "It appears that Mr. Williams came to Boston with 
his whole property, consisting of a considerable tract of land in 
Wisconsin, encumbered by a bond and mortgage to the amount of 
$1,800, which bond, in the course of trade, had fallen into the 
hands of parties in- this city who could not' grant a renewal of 
extension. In twenty-four hours from the time these facts became 
known to Dr. Lothrop he was enabled, through the kindness of the 
late Amos Lawrence, to hand Mr. Williams a check for the whole 
amount, and to send him home with his bond in his possession 
redeemed and cancelled." If this report represents fairly Dr. 
Lothrop's statement, I am sorry to say that it is incorrect from 
beginning to end. The truth, of the affair is not calculated to 
diminish the sympathy which the reverses and misfortunes of 
Mr. Williams must occasion, and it is necessary it should bo 
understood, as many have been unable to reconcile the asserted 
poverty of Mr. Williams at the present time, with the statements of 
Dr. Lothrop, which represent him as owner of a fine estate. Let 



REVERSES. 331 

me apprise the reader at the outset, that the property of Mr. "Wil- 
liams has been for years in the hands of Mr. Amos A. Lawrence, 
of Boston, who claims the whole. The history of the affair is as 
follows. 

During the whole period of his struggles for the recovery of the 
Indian lands, Mr. Williams had to make great outlays, considering 
his limited means, and often to borrow money, so that by the time 
of the final treaty settlement, he found himself burdened with debt. 
His remuneration for defending the rights of the Oneidas fell greatly 
short of what, in equity, it should have been, and the reader has 
seen the fate of the $4,000 due him on behalf of the St. Kegis 
Indians. Had the latter sum been promptly paid him, as it should 
have been, he would have immediately recovered himself. Before 
he obtained the patent for his wife's estate from government, one 
of his creditors, Daniel Whitney, of Green Bay, recovered judgment 
against him in 1839, which judgment was assigned by Mr. Whitney 
in June, 1840, to T. Eustis, of Boston. In April, 1842, his lands at 
Green Bay were sold to satisfy the judgment, leaving him, how 
ever, until the 25th April, 1844, the right of redemption. At the 
earnest request of Mr. Williams, the time was extended from April 
to the 2d of September, 1844. Just as the last period of grace 
was expiring, Mr. Lothrop introduced him to the late Amos Law- 
rence, who advanced the necessary sum, amounting to about $1600, 
and secured himself hy receiving from Mr. Eustis the judgment, &c., 
on land worth, by government valuation, $10,000, it being under- 
stood between Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Williams, that one half of the 
tract, or about 2400 acres, was a bona-fide purchase by the former, in 
order to save the remaining half for Mr. Williams and his family. 
On the part of Mr. Lawrence the act was, doubtless, one of pure 
benevolence, but still he received his equivalent, and purchased 
2400 acres of land for $1600. Mr. Williams, instead of going home 
with "his bond and mortgage in his possession, redeemed and 
cancelled," left his whole property in the hands of Mr. Lawrence, 
in the shape of the papers transferred to him, and without any 



332 THE LOST PRINCE. 

written voucher to show the nature of the agreement between 
them. 

Mr. Eastman, of Green Bay, was, at that time, agent for Mr. 
Lawrence. He found there were other liens upon the land, which 
it was necessary to discharge in order to obtain a perfect title. 
Further advances to a small amount were made, which were to 
remain as a debt upon the portion of the land still belonging to 
Mr. Williams. In December, 1844, Mr. Williams and his wife con- 
veyed to Mr. Amos A. Lawrence, at the suggestion of his agent, 
the whole tract of four thousand eight hundred acres, with the 
understanding that they did no more than constitute him conserva- 
tor of the two thousand four hundred acres pertaining to 
themselves, until such time as Mr, Williams could recover from his 
pecuniary embarrassments, and pay off his creditors, and among 
them, Mr. Lawrence himself, for what had been advanced over and 
above the first purchase money. That such was the nature of the 
transaction, there are three decisive proofs. 1. If by the deed of 
December, 1844, Mr, Lawrence obtained the bona-fide title to the 
whole four thousand eight hundred acres, it must have been in 
consequence of the gift to him, without consideration, of two 
thousand four hundred acres from Mr. Williams, which is not sup- 
posable. 2, On January 2, 1845, subsequent to the conveyance, 
Mr. Amos A. Lawrence, wrote to Mr, Williams, making an offer to 
purchase more of the land at the same price that had been paid 
for the first portion, which he would not have done had the whole 
belonged to him, 8. On the 2d August, 1845, Mr. Eastman, agent 
of Mr. Lawrence, wrote to Mr. Williams in tho i;::iowing terms: — 
" This thing can be done if it meets your approbation. A friend 
of ours will advance you $l,642Tyo on the tract of 2,190 acres (or 
half the value, at $1 50 per acre), at 10 per cent, interest, per 
annum, for five years — interest to be paid annually — the tract of 
2,190 acres, the title of which is now in Mr. Amos A, Lawrence, 
of Boston, to be held by him as security for the money to 
be advanced, the taxes and assessments to be paid by you, or 



REVEltSES. 333 

if paid by him, to be charged over to yon, at 10 per cent, advance, 
&c." All this shows clearly that Mr. Amos A. Lawrence was not 
the owner as late as August, 1845, of any more than one-half the 
land, though he held the nominal title to the whole. Subsequently, 
the sum mentioned by Mr. Eastman, was advanced to Mr. Williams 
upon the terms specified. This, as far as I understand it, is the 
whole of the matter. But there seems to have been a misconcep- 
tion on the part of both Mr. Amos Lawrence and his son, the 
cause of which, with the data before me, I cannot comprehend. 
"When, at the expiration of the five years, Mr. Williams, in 
accordance with the agreement, offered to repay the sum bor- 
rowed, which he was able to do by the kindness of a friend, and 
redeem his land, Mr. Amos A. Lawrence refused to accept. 

Occupied with the oversight of a princely commerce, Mr. Amos 
Lawrence, seems to have bestowed scarcely a thought on the 
transaction so important to the humble missionary. Even the 
amount of land was a thing quite hazy in his mind. In writing to 
Mrs. Williams on the subject, he speaks of the property, which in 
all was only four thousand eight hundred acres, as consisting of 
ten thousand, probably confounding the worth of the land with its 
extent. " The purchase," he says, " was made in the first instance 
to save the whole ten thousand acres passing out of Mr. Williams's 
hand, as an act of proper liberality to secure for him a home, and 
of so small importance to me that I did not decide for a few days, 
to whom the conveyance should be made, and then decided that it 
should be made to my son. Since then he has purchased other 
lands there, and paid for these ten thousand acres more than could 
have been obtained in money for them from others, intending 
always to secure a home for you both, and the money thus paid by 
us has not been for investment, hut for relief of yourselves." Mrs. 
Williams, on her part, expressed to Mr. Lawrence her gratitude, 
with a touching simplicity. "Kespected sir," she writes, "a 
stranger who is not accustomed to writing, and one who was 
brought up among the Indians, on the borders of one of the great 



334 THE LOST PRINCE* 

western lakes, would take the liberty to address you. I have been 
induced to this in consequence of seeing your polite and friendly 
note to my husband, on his departure from Boston, and a letter 
lately from your son. Not only these, but on account of your sav- 
ing a portion of his landed property, has moved me at this time, 
from a deep sense of gratitude, to present you my sincere and 
hearty thanks for this benevolent act of yours towards us." The 
design of the transaction was, therefore, most benevolent on the 
part of Mr. Lawrence, though the practical effect has been to 
throw into the hands of his son, by the agency of Mr. Eastman, 
the whole property of Mr. "Williams. 

The value of land in the neighborhood of Green Bay, is greatly 
enhanced, and, perhaps, the two thousand four hundred acres of 
Mr. Williams, might now sell for five dollars an acre ; but, in con- 
sequence of the transaction with Mr. Lawrence, so pompously set 
forth by Dr. Lothrop as an act of pure charity and munificence, he 
has lost his all. Mrs. Williams continues to live, by sufferance, on 
their farm, but the title of it is vested in another. The result, 
then, of all the exertions, from boyhood, of Mr. Williams, for the 
temporal and spiritual welfare of the Indians, has been the loss of 
everything — every event in life has gone against him — health, pro- 
perty, home, have been sacrificed, and reputation endangered, sim- 
ply because he was unfortunate — and in mankind, as well as in some 
races of animals, there seems, often, an instinctive desire to destroy, 
utterly, those whom affliction has wounded. I have endeavored 
clearly to express, in few words, affairs sufficiently intricate; and I 
feel convinced that the most laborious examination of details, which 
might be brought in to cloud these transactions, would not make 
any alteration in the substantial result. In fact, in both cases, 
events speak for themselves. 

As I am not now writing a complete biography of Mr. Williams, 
but merely presenting such facts, in his history, as may enable the 
public to form some opinion of the character and trials of the man, 
I shall pass, briefly, over the most uneventful period of his life, 



REVERSES. 336 

reserving my remarks on the occurrences of the years 1841 and 
1848, until they are brought up in the narrative of my personal 
acquaintance with him. After his resignation of the mission at 
Duck Creek, and the Indian school at St. Regis, he continued to 
perform the duties of his ministerial office whenever opportunity 
offered ; although, being dispirited and afflicted, he remained a great 
portion of the time, at his farm, on the Fox River, where he 
frequently gathered his neighbors for Divine service at his own 
house. 

Human nature can only endure a certain amount of hardship, dis- 
appointment, and trouble, and then the energies of the strongest will 
relax. His health was bad, his prospects clouded, his difficulties, of 
all kinds, daily increasing, every hope he had entertained for the 
regeneration of the Indian race, blighted by political chicanery and 
their own ingratitude; and, if he succumbed, in severe depression, 
under the accumulated burden, it is only what other persons would 
have done. Among churchmen he has been accused of neglecting 
public worship. To this, his reply is, that, he was weak, oppressed, 
lonely ; that, all his efforts had been despised and rejected ; that, he 
had no one to sustain and advise him ; that, he was at a distance, in 
the wilderness, from any place of worship ; and worn down with sor- 
row and disappointment, could do little more than sustain his own 
personal communion with God. He had consecrated his life to the 
service of Christ, among the Indians, He was not fitted by feeling 
or habit for pastoral duty, in a different sphere. Unable, by the 
very constitution of his mind, to manage, with success, his pecu- 
niary affairs, a martyr to his efforts for others, and enduring the 
same kind of trials which have weighed heaviest on some of the 
noblest spirits in the ministry, in this country, he saw his property 
melt beneath his hands, without the power or the tact to save him- 
self from ruin. And, then, in the very midst of afflictions calcu- 
lated to depress the most energetic, came the bewildering and 
stunning intelligence that he was not of the name, nor race, nor 
country, to which he had supposed himself to belong ; but that, 



S86 THE LOST PRINCTE. 

severe as were liis trials in late years, he had borne worse ills in 
childhood, and was the exiled survivor of a family who had 
endured mightier griefs and more terrible reverses. 

How the tidings affected his spirits and harrowed his mind, the 
reader will hereafter perceive ; and, instead of feeling suprised at his 
depression, every candid mind will rather be astonished that he 
rallied his powers sufficiently to become the cheerful, vigorous, and 
intellectual man he still is. Within late years he has resumed his 
missionary labors at St. Regis, and, having accomplished, by the 
kind aid of the provisional bishop of New York, a work he has long 
had at heart, the publication of a re-translation of the principal 
portions of the Book of Common Prayer, adapted alike to the use of 
the Indians both of the English and American church, he has now 
every prospect of being actively and successfully occupied during the 
remainder of his chequered life. Since the year 1848, the subject 
of his foreign birth has frequently been mentioned and discussed in 
the public prints. It was this which, in the first instance, led to my 
acquaintance with him, which, with its results, will occupy the fol- 
lowing pages. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

OUR FIRST INTERVIEW. 

My first acquaintance with the Rev. Eleazar Williams, was in the 
autumn of 1851. His name had been, for years, familiar to my eye, 
from seeing it in the record of missionary proceedings, but beyond 
this I had no knowledge of his history ; when, one day, my atten- 
tion was arrested by a paragraph in a ITew York paper, I believe it 
was the " Courier and Enquirer," containing the strange, and, at 
first sight, most improbable announcement, that there were strong 
reasons for supposing him to be the son of Louis XVI., and that he 
was said to bear a very strong resemblance to the Bourbon family. 
It struck me, at first, as being one of those idle stories we see so 



OUR FIRST INTERVIEW. 337 

frequently in print, but it excited my curiosity, as I was at a loss to 
imagine what could have given rise to a report so wild and marvel- 
lous. I was then residing at Waddington, on the banks of the St. 
Lawrence, and did not even know there was any connection 
between Mr. Williams and the Indians at St. Regis, in my imme- 
diate neighborhood. It, however, occasioned me pleasure to learn, 
from a friend, that Mr. Williams had removed from Green Bay to 
St. Regis, and nothing but constant engagements prevented my 
going to see him, and ascertain what he had to say on the subject, 
though I had no idea but that he would contradict the story, and 
explain the circumstances out of which it had arisen. This, I find 
was the common feeling among his brethren of the clergy, who, not 
unfreq[uently, alluded to it, for the first time, in a laughing way, 
and were surprised to find he treated the matter seriously, and was 
sometimes immediately afi'ected to tears. 

As I was about to leave St. Lawrence county, I regretted not 
bding able to see him, before my departure, when accident threw him 
in my way. I have already, in another form, given an account of 
our interview, and repeat here the substance of what I then said, 
because it explains the interest I have since taken in him, gives a cor- 
rect picture of his manners, and apparent character, and is an intro- 
duction to the history of the last few months of his life. It also 
exhibits the casual manner in which the present agitation of the 
question has arisen, and exonerates him from the charge of having 
thrust himself before the public. I found him busily engaged in 
the sacred duties of his ministry, which he has ever since uninter- 
ruptedly pursued, without allowing himself to be diverted from 
them, by the excitement and investigation of which he was the 
centre. Verbal repetitit)n, however unpleasant, is unavoidable, 
because, as a matter of evidence, the subject has assumed a certain 
definite form,- from which it is impossible now to separate it. 

Upon entering the cars, on the Ogdensburg railroad, on my way 
to New York, in the autumn of 1851, I observed a somewhat stout 
old gentleman, talking to two Indians in their own language, in a 

15 



338 THE LOST PRINCE. 

very animated manner, and was much interested in watching the 
varied play of their countenances while listening to him. He 
appeared to he very eloquent, used much gesticulation, and worked 
his hearers into a state of excitement more remarkable, when com- 
pared with the usual stolid expression of the Indian face. A gen- 
tleman on the seat before me, Who was also watching the singular 
group, said, " He must be a half-breed," for we were all surprised at 
the freedom with which one of evidently European figure and face, 
spoke the Indian tongue. It then occurred to me that it was Wil- 
liams, and on my saying so, and mentioning the mystery connected 
with his name, the gentleman who had first spoken rose, and asked 
the conductor, who confirmed my supposition. On hearing this, 
I introduced myself to Mr. Williams as a brother clergyman, apolo- 
gizing for not having paid him a visit. I found him friendly and 
easy of access. He said he had been trying to convince his Indian 
friends, who were members of the Romish communion, of their errors, 
and that the poor fellows were much interested in what he had ad- 
vanced. He was going to Burlington, Vermont, and from thence to 
Boston, and as our route lay down Ohamplain, we took the steamer 
together at Rouse's Point. While waiting on the dock for the 
arrival of the vessel, I was prepossessed in his favor, from noticing 
the unafiected kindness he showed the Indians, in directing them what 
to do, and aiding them with their luggage. I was perfectly familiar 
with the Indian lineaments and charcteristics, but was not sorry, 
that at my interview with him, I had so good an opportunity of 
attentively comparing his appearance with that of his reputed coun- 
trymen, and, the closer my examination, the more my curiosity was 
raised, for though his dress was not such as to show him to advan- 
tage, he presented, in every respect, the marks of different race 
and station from theirs, and my wonder was, that any attentive 
observer should ever have imagined him to be an Indian. 

When we were seated on the dock, I told him, I had, seen a state- 
ment in the newspapers, which had excited my curiosity, and 
should feel obliged, if it was not intrusive, by being informed if he 



OUR FIRST INTERVIEW. 339 

believed the story of his royfl,! origin, and upon what evidence the 
extraordinary claim was based. He replied, the subject was painful 
to him, nor could he speak of it unmoved, but would, with pleasure, 
give me the required information. " There seems to me," I then 
said, " one simple and decisive test of the truth of your claim, I mean, 
your memory of your childhood. If you have always lived among 
the Indians, you cannot forget it, and if you are the lost Dauphin, 
it seems scarcely credible that, being at the time of your mother's 
death more than eight years of age, you could have passed through 
the fearful scenes of the revolution, without a strong impression of 
the horrors attendant on your early years. Have you any memory 
of what happened in Paris, or of your voyage to this country?" 

" Therein," he replied, " lies the mystery of my life. I know 
nothing about my infancy. Everything that occurred to me is 
blotted out, entirely erased, irrecoverably gone. My mind is a blank 
until thirteen or fourteen years of age. You must imagine a child 
who, as far as he knows anything, was an idiot, destitute even of 
consciousness that can be remembered until that period. He was 
bathing on Lake George, among a group of Indian boys. He clam- 
bered with the fearlessness of idiocy to the top of a high rock. He 
plunged down head foremost into the water. He was taken up 
insensible, and laid in an Indian hut. He was brought to life. There 
was the blue sky, there were the mountains, there were the waters. 
That was the first I knew of life." 

" When, then, and how," I continued, " did you come to entertain 
the idea, you now do, concerning your birth ? What is there to con- 
firm it?" 

" I was under the impression," he replied, " that I was at least 
partly of Indian extraction, until the time that the Prince de Join- 
ville came to this country. One of the first questions he asked on 
his arrival in- New York was, whether there was such a person 
known as Eleazar Williams, among the Indians of the northern part 
of the State ; and after some inquiries in difierent quarters, he was 
told there was such a person, who was at that time a Missionary of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church, at Green Bay, Wisconsin, and was 



340 THE LOST PRINCE. 

advised to apply for further information to some prominent mem- 
bers of the church in this citj^ He accordingly applied to Mr. 
Thomas Ludlow Ogden, who, at the Prince's request, wrote to me, 
stating that the Prince was then in the country, and before his 
return to France, would be happy to have an interview with me. 
I replied to Mr. Ogden, that I should be exceedingly happy to see the 
Prince at any time. I was much surprised with his cor^nunication ; 
but supposed, however, that as I had resided a long time in the 
west, and had been chaplain to Gen. Taylor, he might desire some 
local information, which I could give him as readily as most men. 
Some time elapsed, and I heard nothing more on the subject, which 
was beginning to fade from my mind,* when one day, while on 
board a steamer on Lake Michigan, I had an interview with the 
Prince, who shortly after, at Green Bay, revealed the secret of my 
birth." 

Mr. Williams then proceeded to give me many of the incidents 
connected with this memorable interview; but as I have, at a 
later period, drawn from him an account, in every way more cir- 
cumstantial, of all that occurred, I will postpone further particulars 
until the subject recurs in the order of events. 

To return again to our conversation. " Is your reputed mother," 
I inquired, " living — the Indian woman who brought you up ? Is it 
not easy to ascertain from her, whether or not you are her child ? 
What does she say upon the subject?" 

" My reputed mother," he said, " is still living, at a very advanced 
age. She is now at Oaughnawaga. I ought, as soon as the Prince 
told me the secret of my birth, to have returned to the east and 
seen her. But I unfortunately neglected to do so for some time, and 
when I did come, I found that the Komish Priests had been tamper- 
ing with her, and that her mouth was hermetically sealed. Since I 
have been at St. Regis, I have learned from the Indians, that the 

* The above account of our conversation was written months after it occured, and I 
must, in the last sentence, have partially misrepresented what Mr. Williams said, as 
there is documentary evidence that he went expressly to the west to meet the Princa|| 
de Joinville. 1 



OUR FIRST INTERVIEW. 341 

priests said to her, ' Suppose that this man should prove to be heir 
to a throne on the other side of the Great Salt Lake, what injury 
may he not do to the Church? He has been brought up a Pro- 
testant, and if hg obtained sovereign power it would be the ruin 
of many souls. You must, therefore, say nothing one way or the 
other, but keep entirely silent.' And so all my efforts to extract 
anything from her were unavailing. Her immovable Indian ob- 
stinacy has hitherto been proof against every effort I could make. 
But I have not given up hope yet, and will try her again. When 
asked the direct question, Is Eleazar Williams your son ? she will 
neither answer yes nor no — but keeps her mouth shut, and seems 
indifferent to what is said. When hard pressed indeed on one occa- 
sion, she has been known to say, ' Do you think that Eleazar is a 
bastard V but that was all. If, however, the question is put to her 
in an indirect form, she will begin, in the monotonous manner in 
which ignorant people repeat a story, in which they have been 
drilled by others, and have told for years in one way, to give a list 
of her children, and the dates of their birth, bringing in my name 
at a particular place. But we have had the baptismal register at 
Caughnawaga examined, and the priest was made to certify to it, 
and though the names of all the rest of her children are recorded 
there, together with the dates of their birth and baptism, mine does 
not occur there ; and the births of the children follow so closely 
upon each other, at regular intervals of two years between each, 
that it does not seem naturally possible I could have been her child, 
unless I was twin to some other child whose birth and baptism are 
recorded while mine are not — a thing which, when we take into 
consideration the exactness and fidelity with which such affairs are 
transacted in the Church of Rome, does not seem probabl/e, and 
scarcely possible. The silence of the baptismal register may, there- 
fore, be deemed conclusive proof that this Indian woman is not my 
mother. 

" And then comes in," continued Williams, " evidence of a differ- 
ent description. A French gentleman died at New Orleans, iu 



342 THE LOST PRINCE. 

1 848, named Belanger, who confessed on his death bed that he was 
the person who brought the Dauphin to this country, and placed 
him among the Indians in the northern part of the State of New 
York. It seems that Belanger had taken a solemn oath of secresy, 
alike for the preservation of the Dauphin and the safety of those 
who were instrumental in effecting his escape, but the near approach 
of death, and the altered circumstances of the times, induced liim to 
break silence before his departure from the world. He died in 
January, 1848. Now, the person who had charge of the Dauphin 
after tlie death of Simon, stabbed a man in a political quarrel in 
France, and fled for safety.* lie it was, I suppose, who, with the 
assistance and ccmnivance of others, carried the youth with him to 
the Low Countries, and thence to England. He must have changed 
his own name for greater security, crossed the Atlantic, and after 
depositing him with the Indians, gone to Louisiana and there lived 
and died. 

" The next link in the evidence is yet more singular. A French 
gentleman hearing my story, brought a printed account of the cap- 
tivity of the Dauphin, and read me a note in which it was stated 
that Simon the jailer, having become incensed with the Prince for 
some childish offence, took a towel which was hanging on a nail, 
and in snatching it hastily drew out the nail with it, and inflicted 
two blows upon his face, one over the left eye and the other on 
the right side of the nose. ' And now,' said he, ' let me look at your 
face.' When he did so, and saw the scars on the spots indicated in 
the memoirs, he exclaimed, ' Mon Dieu ! what proof do I want more ?' 

" But that is not all," he continued. " In the same memoirs it 
is said, that the Dauphin died of scrofula, and that the disease was 
on his knees. My knees are eaten up with scrofula, and there are 
no other scrofulous marks on my body. Such are the main points 

* The historic misstatements of Mr. Williams, in conversation, respecting events in 
France, only show he had at this time paid little attention to the subject, and picked 
op his information from others. He was utterly ignorant of the mass of historic evi- 
dence in support of his personal narrative. 



OUR FIRST INTERVIEW. 343 

of evidence on which ray claim rests, and you may judge of their 
strength — and further I can only refer you to the alleged resem- 
blance between me and Louis XVIIL, and the Bourbon family in 
general. I remember a gentleman put his hand over the name 
attached to a picture of Louis XVIII., and asked a friend whose 
portrait it was, 'That of Mr. Williams,' was the reply. I have 
somewhat of a curiosity in my valise, and will show it you if you 
would like to see it. It is a dress of Marie Antoinette. It was 
given me by a person who bought it in France, and who hearing 
my story, and considering me the rightful owner, made me a 
present of it." 

He then went forward, opened his valise, and returned with a 
small bundle under his arm, which he carried into the upper saloon 
for the sake of privacy. It is of course impossible to say whether 
the dress which he showed me is what it is asserted to be, but from 
its appearance it certainly may be so. It was a magnificent but some- 
what faded brocade silk. It had been taken to pieces, and 
consisted of a skirt, back piece, stomacher, and train ten or twelve 
feet in length. The waist was very slender. There is pleasure in 
believing in the truth of memorials of the past, and I cannot envy 
the critical coldness of one who would ridicule me for surrendering 
myself, under the influence of the scene, to the belief, that the 
strange old gentleman before me, whose very aspect is a problem, 
was son to the fair being whose queenly form that faded dress had 
once contained, as she moved noblest and loveliest in the Halls of 
Versailles ; and that in childish beauty and innocence, the heir of 
crowns, and the hope of kingdoms, the observed of all observers, 
he had rested fondly against its silken folds when the living loveli- 
ness of Marie Antoinette was within it.* However, I am not 

* As the fact of this dress having belonged to Marie Antoinette has been ques- 
tioned, I give the note with which the gift was accompanied : — 

" Presented to the Rev. Eleazar Williams, with the respectful regards of Mrs. Edward 
Clarke, of Northampton. Being in England some years since, I had an opportunity there 
to purchase this dress, once worn by the Queen Marie Antoinette, of Trance. It had 



344 THE LOST PRINCE. 

writing romance, but a matter-of-fact account of an adventure on 
a steamboat. 

I now proceeded to scrutinize more closely the form, features, 
and general appearance of Mr. Williams, and to re-examine the 
scars on his face. He is an intelligent, noble-looking old man, 
with no trace^ Jiowever slight^ of the Indian about him except what 
may be fairly accounted for by his long residence among Indians. 
He is far naore familiar with their language than with English, 
which he speaks correctly, and even eloquently, as far as style is 
concerned, but pronounces imperfectly. His manner of talking 
reminds you of a Frenchman, and he shrugs his shoulders and 
gesticulates like one. But he has the port and presence 
of an European gentleman of high rank ; a nameless something 
which I never saw but in persons accustomed to command ; 
a countenance bronzed by exposure below the eyebrows; a 
fair, high, ample, intellectual, but receding forehead ; a slightly 
aquiline, but rather small nose ; a long Austrian lip, the expression 
of which is of exceeding sweetness when in repose ; full fleshy 
cheeks, but not high cheek bones ; dark, bright, merry eyes of 
hazel hue ; graceful, well-formed neck ; strong muscular limbs, 
indicating health and great activity ; small hands and feet, and 
dark hair, sprinkled with gray, as fine in texture as silk. I should 
never have taken him for an Indian. Some persons who saw him 
several years ago, tell me, their impression is that he looked 
partially like one, but admit, their opinion may have been 
influenced by their having been previously told he was of 
Indian extraction. I will here insert a description of him by 
another hand, furnished me by Mr. Williams. " His complexion is 

been bought at the court by a gentleman, attached, at that time, to our embassy. I 
was informed that the dresses once worn by the queen, were afterwards distributed 
among the ladies of the court, who would sometimes dispose of them in this manner 
at auction. 

^'JSomid Mil, JUf'orihampion, 
" Jany. 8, 1851." 



OUR FIRST INTERVIEW. 345 

rather dark, like that of one Avho had become bronzed by living 
much in the open air, and he passes for a half-breed. But his fea- 
tures are decidedly European, rather heavily moulded, and 
strongly characterized by the full, protuberant Austrian lips 
This, tlie experienced observer is well aware, is never found in the 
aboriginal, and very rarely among the Americans themselves. His 
head is well formed, and sits proudly on his shoulders. His eyes 
are dark, but not black. His hair may be called black, is rich and 
glossy, and interspersed with gray. His eyebrows are full, and of 
the same color — upon the left is a scar. His beard is heavy, and 
nose aquiline. The nostril is large and finely cut. His tempera- 
ment is genial, with a dash of vivacity in his manners, he is fond 
of good living, and inclines to embonpoint, which is the character- 
istic of the Bourbon family." 

While refolding the dress of the poor queen, I asked him if he 
could account for the conduct of the Prince de Joinville in disclos- 
ing so important a secret as that of his royal birth, and requesting 
him to give up rights previously unknown to him, and which, 
without information derived from the Prince, he would have had 
no means of ascertaining. He replied, in substance, it might 
indeed seem strange, but the only satisfactory explanation he 
would suggest was, that although he was personally ignorant of his 
origin, yet there were those both in Europe and this country who 
were acquainted with it, and that Louis Phillippe being at that 
time anxious to fortify his family in power by every possible 
means, contracting alliances with other royal lines of Europe, yet 
knew that in him existed an obstacle which might possibly prevent 
the accomplishment of all his designs, and had therefore, perhaps, 
delegated his son to reveal the fact to him so as to escape the conse- 
quences of its coming to light some other way. However, I may 
add that, at this interview, Mr. Williams positively declined stating 
all that passed between him and the Prince de Joinville. "I do 
not trouble my mind, he continued, "much about the matter, other- 
wise I might easily render myself unhappy by repining at the will 



346 THE LOST PRINCE. 

of God. But I submit myself entirely to His will. My story is on 
the -winds of Heaven, and will work its way without me. They 
have got it in France. Copies of my daguerreotype have been sent 
to eminent men there. God in His providence must have some 
mysterious ends to answer, or He never would have brought me so 
low from such a height. He has cast my lot among this poor 
Indian people, and I have ministered and will minister to them, if it 
please Him until death. I don't want a crown. I am convinced of 
my royal descent; so are my family. The idea of royalty is in our 
minds, and we will never rehnquish it. You have been talking," 
he concluded, smiling between jest and earnest, "with a king 
to-night. Come, let us go down stairs, and I will show you some- 
thing else." He then went again to his valise and took out some 
miniatures and a daguerreotype. "There is the picture of 
Madame," he said, putting into my hands the miniature of a very 
beautiful young lady. "That was how my wife looked when I 
married her. And there," giving me another, " is my likeness at 
the same time. I suppose you know who that is," he continued, 
taking back the miniatures and giving me a daguerreotype. It was 
his likeness such as he now is, but having a broad band fastened by 
an ornamented cross passed over the shoulder as worn by European 
princes. In the daguerreotype the Hghts and shadows of his 
marked and expressive face are brought fully out, and the sun's pen- 
cil makes him look every inch a king. Strange, indeed,^ if a St. 
Eegis Indian could be the original of such a portrait, drawn by so 
unfailing an artist. The steamboat by this time was drawing near 
to Burlington, and Williams employed the few moments that 
remained, in describing his situation at St. Regis. He said that 
having left his wife in the west, he was living alone in a little hut, 
almost destitute of the necessaries of life, without books, without 
companions, except the Indians, and that he occupied his time in 
teaching a few children. 

The boat stopped — he hurried down, and I parted with him. 



PUTNAM*S MAGAZINE. 847 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Putnam's magazine. 

When our interview was over, I had little idea I should ever again 
see Mr. Williams ; but the strange story I had heard made a great 
impression on my mind. It haunted me. I could not get rid of it, 
and when I tried to throw it off, it would recur again. I had seen 
something of men, and been a not inattentive observer. Mr. Wil- 
liams was one of the most simple men I had ever met, and apart 
from simplicity there is little excellence and questionable truth. I 
saw clearly all the difficulties with which his story was suri*ounded, 
but I reposed confidence in him ; and I am happy to say that, 
although my confidence has often been put, in the course of discus- 
sion, to the severest test, it remains unshaken. Though I saw him 
under circumstances least favorable to impress the mind with 
ideas of noble birth — among Indians, in plain, simple dress, in 
poverty, in depression, in social isolation, and unfriended destitu- 
tion—yet, there was nothing in his appearance or manner, his 
bf»dily or mental characteristics, to jar with the idea excited by his 
words. Everything was in keeping. Had any other person I ever 
met told me such a story, I should have laughed him in the face. 
He was evidently a man who had a history which did not lie on the 
surface, because nature never placed such a man in such a position. 
He was clearly an exotic. With no sign of the Indian, he bore 
every mark of a mixture of French and German blood, and good 
blood, too. But what chiefly led me to believe his statements 
were true, was, that he, soberly and seriously, told improbabilities 
as facts, without knowing what there was to sustain them. A pre- 
tender would never have done this. He would have had all his 
proofs cut, dried, and labelled, and his story, consistent or incon- 
sistent, fully made out. With Mr. Williams it was entirely 
different. He mentioned certain strange things which had hap- 



S48 THE LOST PRINCE. 

pened to him, and a few isolated hints of confirmation, merely 
showing there might be evidence fuller and more explicit. With 
nothing to gain, he risked, as the event has proved, everything. 

I was surprised that no one had taken the trouble to probe 
the mystery which hung about him, since, if it were a case of 
deception, it was one of the most extraordinary the world has 
seen, and deserved on that account to be chronicled; and, if 
his statements were, indeed, true, there could not be a richer pearl 
of historic fact rescued from oblivion. 

I repeated what he had said, to many persons, and made all pos- 
sible inquires concerning him. He had mentioned the Hon. J. C. 
Spencer, of Albany, as one to whom he had communicated the 
facts I have detailed ; and, meeting that gentleman, in Convention, 
I stated the impression his story had made on my mind, when Mr. 
Spencer, with earnestness, exclaimed, " His story made a great 
impression on my mind, too, sir — a very, very great impression;" 
and, then, went on to mention several facts of which I was pre- 
viously ignorant, and among them, the omission of the Dauphin's 
name from the funeral solemnities. I had seen too much of the 
ripe judgment and legal acumen of Mr. Spencer, not to feel certain 
that there was something to be discovered in a historic question 
which had riveted his attention ; and, though he concluded by say- 
ing, that, he feared it was now too lafce to gain positive evidence, 
and that the whole subject would, probably, remain a mystery like 
the man in the iron mask ; the result of our conversation was to sti- 
mulate my desire to clear away the obscurity. 

Shortly after, I repeated Mr. Williams's story to the Eev. Dr. 
Hawks, who was as much interested in it as I had been, and 
requested me to put what I had said in writing, which I did in 
the shape of a lettter addressed to him. He read my letter 
to some friends, and this drew from Dr. J. W. Francis, who was 
present, an account of a conversation with M. Genet, respecting 
the Dauphin. He said that, in the year 1818, there was a social 
party at the house of Dr. Hosack, in New York, at which there 



Putnam's magazine. 349 

were present, beside himself, Dr. Macneven, Counsellor Sampson, 
Thomas Cooper, of Carlisle, Count Jean D'Angle}^, and M. Genet, 
formerly ambassador from France. In the course of the conversa- 
tion, the subject of the Dauphin was introduced, and the inquiry- 
started as to his fate. At length, Genet distinctly said, " Gentle- 
men, the Dauphin of France is not dead, hut was h'ought to Ame- 
ricay The conversation continued, for some time, and M. Genet 
informed the company, among other things, that he believed the 
Dauphin was in Western New York, and that Le Ray de Chaumont 
knew all about it. 

The issue here raised is a mere collateral one, and has no neces- 
sary connection with the main argument; but as the names of 
many highly respectable gentlemen are introduced, it may be as 
well to consider it in this place. The facts are simply, that M. 
Genet did make the statements referred to at the time, as he did 
also at many other times, and to many other persons, and, therefore, 
had his own reasons for supposing the Dauphin to be then alive in 
America, and that Le Ray was in the secret. In the latter he may 
have been mistaken. For many years, as I learn from members of 
his family, he entertained hopes of discovering the Dauphin, but 
seems to have relinquished expectations of success in his latter 
years, and especially after conversing with Billaud Varennes, in 
Philadelphia, who expressed the opinion that the Prince was dead. 
Though an ambassador of the Republic, Genet was warmly and 
affectionately attached to Louis XYI. and his family, and had him- 
self been on the point of bringing, at the martyred king's request, 
both his children to America, when he came out as ambassador. 
A carriage, with a false back, in which the children were to have 
been concealed, was provided for their escape ; but on the eve of 
the execution of the pi;oject, the carriage was seized and destroyed 
by the mob. This fact, and other circumstances, which cannot now 
be ascertained, may have induced him to believe the Prince was 
brought to his original destination by the intrigues of Louis XVIII., 
whose character and designs he well knew, having himself seen a 



350 THE LOST PRINCE. 

letter from the Count de Provence to the Arch-anarchist. Again, 
Count Real and Count Jean D'Angley were in conference with Le 
Eay de Chaumont, in 1817, as stated by Dr. Francis, at a time when 
the existence of Louis XVII. was being agitated in Paris. 

Apart from these circumstances, there is nothing to indicate that 
Le Ray had any knowledge of the affair, except an allusion in his 
conversation with Mr. Wilhams, in 1819 or 1820. Mr. Williams 
was at that time residing at Oneida, in which place there also lived 
a Col. de Ferriere, who had fled from France during the Revolution, 
and married an Indian woman, who. is still living. Le Ray inquired 
of Wilhams concerning the health and welfare of De Ferriere, 
adding that he had been a great sufferer in the royal cause: that 
the King's family had been widely scattered, but that, notwith- 
standing all the misfortunes of De Ferriere, he was no greater suf- 
ferer than a member of the royal family, whom both Colonel de 
Ferriere and he believed to be in this country. 

Now, in 1816 or '17, De Ferriere went to France, and took 
several Indians with him. Before starting, he obtained from Mr. 
Williams three separate signatures to some legal document. One 
of the Indians afterwards related that he had been introduced into 
the presence of some person of distinction in Paris, and asked, 
among other questions, who was then the religious teacher in Oneida, 
when he replied Eleazar Williams ; he was again asked if he was 
certain as to his being there, and on his replying in the affirmative, 
was dismissed. It is a well known fact that De Ferriere went to 
Europe a poor man, that he returned a rich one, and that he was 
afterwards in correspondence with the royal family of France. 

In October, 1852, I wrote to Mr. Williams for additional infor- 
mation, if he could afford me any, respecting the subject of our 
conversation on the steamboat, and asked if he had any objection 
to the publication of the facts he had mentioned, not knowing, at 
the time, that any fuller accounts than I had seen had been prin- 
ted. In his reply, dated Hogansburg, Nov, 4, 1852, he informed 
me of the reception of a letter from Paris, purporting to proceed 



351 



from the secretary of the President, making inquiries, in a respect- 
ful manner, concerning the events of his life, and also of similar 
communications from several eminent French ecclesiastics, but said 
that he had not replied to them, as the subject was " very afflictive " 
to him. " It has been, and is," he continued, " a very great annoy- 
ance, from which I would gladly be delivered. You cannot be sur- 
prised, reverend sir, when I say that my feelings have been such, 
at times, as no pen can describe, nor tongue express. I am in 
a state of exile among the Indians, and compelled, at times to beg 
ray bread, although connected with a Christian Church, who has 
means in abundance to sustain her humble and self-denying mis- 
sionary honorably. It is true I am allowed a little pittance, which 
is scarcely enough to clothe me ; yet I still continue to labor 
patiently in the cause of my Divine Master, who suffered and died, 
but is now my exalted Saviour. I seek not an earthly crown, 
but heavenly, where we shall be made kings and priests unto God 
— to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Nothing keeps 
rae in my present position but that gracious promise of my blessed 
Saviour, ' Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown 
of life.'" 

His letter only increased my sympathy in his behalf, and, though he 
seemed quite indifferent to the publication of the strange story, it 
seemed an evident duty to him, to the church of which he was a 
minister, and to history, of which, provided his origin could be 
ascertained, he would form a portion, to make some effort to clear 
up the mystery. 

I knew he must be in great want and destitution ; that, as far as I 
could ascertain, he was laboring zealously among the Indians, and 
deserved more consideration at the hands of the church than he had 
received ; and, therefore, after consultation with Dr. Hawks, who 
was deeply interested in his case, and strongly urged me to make 
some effort to ascertain the truth in the matter, I determined to 
visit the north and see him. 

I accordingly left New York for this purpose, on 17th November, 



352 THE LOST PRINCE. 

and arrived at Morra, in the neighborhood of his residence, on the 
following day; meeting an old resident who had known Mr. 
Wilhams for many years, named Harrington, I asked him Avhich he 
thought the oldest, without intimating for what purpose I made the 
inquiry. Without any hesitation he rephed, that he was himself 
sixty-eight years of age, but had always considered himself younger 
than Mr. Williams. He added, that Williams was, without doubt, 
an European. His son, an inteUigeit and respectable man, who has 
had every opportunity of knowing the truth in the matter, wrote, 
at my request, the following certificate: — "I was brought up at 
Hogansburg, and have served in the army as a private, under 
General Worth. I have known Indians of various tribes, 
especially the Seminoles and the Iroquois, I have known Indians 
as long as I have known white men. I am personally acquainted 
with the Rev. Eleazar Williams, and have known him since my 
childhood. I do not believe him to be an Indian. He is entirely 
unlike the rest of his family. I knew some of his supposed 
brothers, especially Jarvis Williams. They bore no resemblance to 
Eleazar. He looks like a German or Frenchman; they were 
undoubtedly Indians. The general impression among intelligent 
people, in this neighborhood, who know Mr. Williams, is, that ho 
is not an Indian. His reputed mother does not acknowledge him 
to be her son. Mr. Williams bears an excellent character among 
us, and is highly respected. I know an Indian as well as I know a 
cow or a horse." 

Every inquiry which I made in the neighborhood of Mr. Wil- 
liams's residence, led to precisely the same conclusion. I found 
there were certain facts to which every one I conversed with, in 
Hogansburg and the neighborhood, was ready to testify, viz. that 
there was no personal resemblance between Williams and any of 
his nominal kindred, dead or living ; that he had no marks what- 
ever of being an Indian, in the estimation of persons who see 
Indians every moment of their lives ; that old Mary Ann Williams 
preserved an unaccountable silence and mystery respecting him, and 



Putnam's magazine. 353 

did not acknowledge Lim to be her son; that he was hated, 
opposed, and thwarted in every possible manner by the Eomish 
priest and his peojjle, but labored to do his duty faithfully under 
these discouraging circumstances. 

His landlady at Hogansburg, said, "I don't know whether he is 
Indian or not. He does not look like one. If I had not heard 
that he was one, I should not suppose that he was, any more than 
you. He is not like any of his family. All the other children ai-e 
dead." And I may add, they all died of consumption. I found the 
absence of his name from the baptismal register was undoubted; 
the Eev. Francis Marcoux, Romish priest, at St. Eegis, having lately 
acknowledged the omission to the Hon. Phineas Atwater, formerly 
Indian agent, but endeavored to account for it by saying, that he 
was privately baptized on account of sickness, which certainly is 
no reason why his baptism should not have been registered. 

His temporary absence on missionary service deprived me of the 
pleasure of seeing him, but I obtained full insight into his position, 
estimation in the neighborhood, and other things necessary to the 
formation of a correct judgment. He is missionary at St. Regis 
and Hogansburg, both miserable, lonely places, receiving no pay- 
ment from the Indians among whom he labors, and but a small 
stipend from the Missionary Committee. The rigors of the 
climate are excessive ; the thermometer in winter being frequently 
thirty degrees below zero, and one can scarcely conceive a situation 
for an intelligent mind more lonely, more unfriended, more desti- 
tute. His residence is on the Indian Reservation, a wild tract of 
woodland, partially cleared, here and there, at the edges. At the 
time of my visit, dead evergreen swamps, decayed vegetation, rude 
fences, half prostrate, surrounded the ricketty shed, admitting 
the cold at a thousand crevices, in which resided poor "Williams 
and the old Indian woman, his reputed mother, whom he heroi- 
cally treats as if she were his parent, though believing himself to 
be the son of the peerless Marie Antoinette. He had no church 
building, but was trying to build a school-house on the Indian 



354 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Eeservation, which stood roofless in the piercing cold, the picture 
of desolation. 

Having failed to meet Mr. Williams at Hogansbarg, I went to 
Caughnawaga, in hopes of finding him, but was again disappointed. 
I, however, inquired among the Indians, as to their impressions of 
his race, and found tlie same opinion prevalent there, as in the 
vicinity of his residence. 

On my way home I had another interview with the Hon J. 0. 
Spencer, in Albany, from whom I derived many additional items of 
information. From him I learned, that Prof. Da}'^, on his return 
from Europe, in an interview with Mr. Williams, threw some litho- 
graphs and engravings on the table ; at the sight of one of which, 
and without seeing the name, Williams was greatly excited, and 
cried, " Good God, I know that face. It has haunted me through 
life," or words to that effect. On examination, it proved to be the 
portrait of Simon the jailer. 

I afterwards received a letter from Prof. Day, in answer to 
inquiries made of him on the subject, in which he gave the com- 
bined recollections of himself and family. The incident occurred at 
Northampton, in the summer of 1850-51. Previous to seeing the 
engraving, Mr. Williams had spoken of a hideous countenance which 
had haunted him for years. At the time the portrait was shown to 
him. Prof, Day's hand was over the name. "He was silent," writes 
Prof, Day, " for a moment, and then said, ' that is the countenance,' 
or words to that effect — but added, that in one respect, it did not 
agree with his recollections, for the man whose features had haunted 
him all his life was bald. It was impossible to decide, from the 
lithograph, whether such was the case with Simon, or not, as he is 
represented, with his hat on, but on looking at the inscription, under 
the print, it was evident that he might have been bald, as he was 
fifty-eight years old when guillotined with Robespierre." Of course, 
in this, and all similar cases of recognition, the proof can only be 
conclusive to the individual who is the subject of it. Mr. Spencer 
likewise mentioned he had been informed by Mr. Williams, that 



PUTNAM S MAGAZINE. 855 

he had ascertained from his reputed mother, that two boxes of 
clothing, and other articles had been left with liim at the time of 
his adoption. One of these boxes has been carried off by a daughter 
of Thomas Williams, and cannot now be recovered. The other, 
there is every reason to suppose is still in Montreal, but efforts are 
made in certain quarters to conceal it. In this box were three coins 
or medals, one of gold, one of silver, and one of copper — fac-similes 
of each other — being the medals struck at the coronation of Louis 
XYI. and Marie Antoinette. The gold and silver medals being of 
value, were sold by the Indians in Montreal, The copper one was 
retained and is now in my possession. The gold medal has also 
been seen in the possession of a Eomisli bishop at Montreal or 
Quebec. 

The probability that these traces of the Dauphin are to be found in 
Montreal is increased by the proximity of Caughnawaga to that city. 
Cauglmawaga is a straggling Indian village on the St. Lawrence, 
opposite Lachine, and within sight of Montreal. It consists, besides 
a number of scattered huts, of two long narrow streets varying con- 
siderably in width. The houses are low and shabby, most of them 
of wood, but some of dark stone. The masonry is of the rudest 
kind. A Koman Catholic church, a solid stone building, of some 
slight pretensions to architecture, stands in the middle of one of the 
streets. In looking at the dingy houses, the narrow streets, the 
crowd of little Indian children ; and considering the loneliness of the 
spot in former years before railroads and steamboats had brought 
it into connection with the busy world, one cannot help feeling how 
secure a hiding-place for the poor scion of royalty this village pre- 
sented. And the same remarks apply more strongly still to St. 
Eegis, which lies on the present boundary between Canada and the 
U. S. But from these secluded spots the Indians, who partake 
much of the character and roving habits of the gipsey, wander forth 
over the surrounding country, selling baskets, and bartering what- 
ever of value comes into their possession. Those who placed the 
Dauphin among the Indians, might be sure that the tomb could 



356 THE LOST PRINCE. 

scarcely be a more secret shelter; but at the same time if they 
desired to identify him, as their leaving these relics would inti- 
mate, they could have had little hope that the habits of the Indians 
would permit the retention of any traces of royalty. 

Having obtained ail the information I could without seeing Mr. 
Williams, I returned to New York. On Dec. the 7th, I received a 
note from him, stating he was in the city. Upon calling at his 
hotel, I found that, having heard of my journey to the north, he had 
come to New York to see me. He accompanied me to the study of 
Dr. Hawks, in whose presence he confirmed the statements he 
had previously made to me. In the course of the conversation 
which took place between us at my house, I drew from him a 
detailed account of the interview between him and the Prince de 
Joinville, alluded to in the early part of this narrative, to which I 
will now proceed, merely premising that, although given in an 
uninterrupted form, it was in a great measure elicited by dint of 
questioning and cross-questioning, so as to obtain all the particulars 
concerning the value of which Mr. Williams did not seem to be 
sufficiently aware ; but there is no thought or fact he did not 
express, and the language, as near as a retentive memory can 
give it, is in his own words, though somewhat coudensed. After 
describing the correspondence between him and Mr. Thomas L. 
Ogden, and re-affirming strongly the fact that the Prince had made 
inquiries concerning him, immediately on his arrival in the country, 
he said, in substance, as follows : — 

" In Oct., 1841, I was on my way from Buffalo to Green Bay, 
and took a steamer from the former place bound to Chicago, which 
touched at Mackinac, and left me there, to await the arrival of the 
steamer from Buffalo to Green Bay. Vessels which had recently 
come in announced the speedy arrival of the Prince de Joinville ; 
public expectation was on tiptoe, and crowds were on the wharves. 
The steamer at length came in sight, salutes were fired and 
answered, the colors run up, and she came into port in fine style. 
Immediately she touched, the Prince and his retinue came on shore 



Putnam's magazine. 367 

and went out some little distance from the town, perhaps half a 
mile, to visit some natural curiosities in the neighborhood — the 
Sugar Loaf Rock and the Arch Rock. The steamef awaited their 
return. During their absence I was standing on the wharf among 
the crowd, when Captain John Shook, now at Huron, Ohio, who 
will confirm ray statement, came up to me and asked whether 
I was going on to Green Bay, adding that the Prince de Joinville 
had made inquiries of him concerning a Rev. Mr. "Williams, and that 
he had told the Prince he knew such a person, referring to me, 
whom he supposed was the man he meant, though he could not 
imagine what the Prince could want with or know of me. I 
replied to the Captain in a laughing way, without having any idea 
what a deep meaning was attached to my words, ' Oh, I am a great 
man, and great men will of course seek me out.' Soon after, the 
Prince and his suite arrived, and went on board. I did the same, 
and the steamer put to sea. It was, I think, about two o'clock 
when we left Mackinac. When we were fairly out on the water, 
the Captain came to me and said, 'The Prince, Mr. Williams, 
requests me to say to you that he desires to have an interview with 
you, and will be happy either to have you come to him, or allow 
me to introduce him to you.' 'Present my compliments to the 
Prince,' I said, 'and say, I put myself entirely at his disposal, 
and will be proud to accede to whatever may be his wishes in the 
matter.' The Captain again retired, and soon returned bringing 
the Prince de Joinville with him. I was sitting at the time on a 
barrel. The Prince not only started with evident and involuntary 
surprise when he saw me, but there was great agitation in his face 
and manner — a slight paleness and a quivering of the lip — which I 
could not help remarking at the time, but which struck me more 
forcibly afterwards, in connection with the whole train of circum- 
stances, and by contrast with his usual self-possessed manner. He 
then shook me earnestly and respectfully by the hand, and drew me 
immediately into conversation. The attention he paid me seemed 
to astonish not only myself and the passengers, but also the Prince's 



358 THE LOST PRINCE. 

retinue. At dinner time there was a separate table laid for the 
Prince and his companions, and he invited me to sit with them, and 
offered me tli"e seat of honor by his side. But I was a little abashed 
by the attentions of the Prince, and there was an American officer 
who had attached himself to the party, and behaved in an obtrusive 
and unbecoming manner, which seemed to annoy them, and indeed 
one of the Prince's companions had expressed to me his disgust at his 
behavior. So I thought I would keep out of the circle, and begged 
the Prince to excuse me, and permit me to dine at the ordinary table 
with the passengers, which accordingly I did. After dinner the con- 
versation turned, between us, on the first French settlements in Ame- 
rica, the valor and enterprise of the early adventurers, and the loss 
of Canada to France, at which the Prince expressed deep regret. 
In the course of his remarks, though in what connection I cannot 
now say, he told me he left his suite at Albany, took a private 
conveyance, and went to the head of Lake George. He was very 
copious and fluent in speech, and I was surprised at the good 
English he spoke — a little broken indeed — ^like mine — but still 
very intelligible. "We continued talking late into the night, reclin- 
ing in the cabin, on the cushions, in the stern of the boat. When 
we retired to rest, the Prince lay on the locker and I in the first 
berth next to it. The next day the steamer did not arrive at Green 
Bay until about three o'clock, and during most of the time we were 
in conversation. Looking back thoughtfully upon what was said, 
I can now perceive, the Prince was gradually preparing my mind 
for what was to come at last, although then the different subjects 
seemed to arise naturally enough. At first, he spoke of the con- 
dition of affairs in the United States, and the American Kevolu- 
tion. He expressed admiration for our institutions, and spoke 
at large of the assistance rendered to the Colonies in the struggle 
with the mother country, by Louis the Sixteenth. He said he 
did not think sufficient gratitude was evinced by Americans to 
that monarch, and that, whenever his intervention was alluded to, 
it was attributed to selfish motives, and to a desire to humble the 



Putnam's magazine. 359 

power of England on this continent, by depriving her of her fairest 
colonial possessions, but, in his opinion, Louis XVI. felt a true 
regard for America, and that on every return of the 4th of July, 
when, throughout the United States, the nation was celebrating its 
independence, there should be an especial salute fired to the 
memory of the king who had contributed so much to the result. 
Such was the substance of what was said by the Prince on that sub- 
ject. He then turned to the French Revolution, and said, Louis 
XYI. was innocent of any tyrannical designs toward the people of 
France, and nothing he did personally could justify or excuse the 
excesses of the Revolution; that the last foundations of that 
event were laid in the preceding reign, and, the misconduct and 
misgovernment of Louis XY. were chargeable with the sad events 
which occurred, to a very great extent, although the storm had 
been slowly brewing for centuries. The people of France, though 
they had no just cause to complain of Louis XVI., yet had a right 
to do so of the oppressive institutions then existing, of the tyranny 
of the aristocracy, and the burdens laid en them by the church. He 
then referred to the changes which had since taken place in the form 
of government, and to the present amelioration of the condition of 
the French people under an elective monarchy. On our arrival 
at Green Bay, the Prince said, I would oblige him by accom- 
panying him to his hotel, and taking up my quarters at the 
Astor House. I begged to be excused, as I wished to go to the 
house of my father-in-law. He replied, he had some matters of 
great importance to speak to me about, and as he could not stay 
long at Green Bay, but would take his departure the next day, or 
the day after, he wished I would comply with his request. As 
there was some excitement consequent on the Prince's arrival, and 
a great number of persons were at the Astor House waiting to see 
him, I thought I would take advantage of the confusion to go to 
ray father-in-law's, and promised to return in the evening, when he 
would be more private. I did so, and on my return found the 
Prince alone, with the exception of one attendant, whom he 



360 THE LOST PRINCE. 

dismissed. The gentlemen of his party were in an adjoining room 
laughing and carousing, and I could distinctly hear them during 
my interview with the Prince. He opened the conversation 
by saying, he had a communication to make to me of a very 
serious nature as concerned himself, and of the last importance to 
me, — that it was one in which no others were interested, and, 
therefore, before proceeding further, he wished to obtain some 
pledge of secresy, some promise that I would not reveal to any one 
what he was going to say. I demurred to any such conditions 
being imposed previous to my being made acquainted with the 
nature of the subject, as there might be something in it, after all, 
prejudicial and injurious to others, and it was at length, after some 
altercation, agreed that I should pledge my honor not to reveal 
what the Prince was going to say, provided there was nothing in 
it prejudicial to any one, and I signed a promise to this effect on a 
sheet of paper. It was vague and general, for I would not tie 
myself down to absolute secresy, but left the matter conditional. 
"When this was done, the Prince spoke to this effect : — 

" You have been accustomed, sir, to consider yourself a native of 
this country; but you are not. You are of foreign descent ; you Avere 
born in Eurpoe, sir, and however incredible it may at first seem to 
you, I have to tell you that you are the son of a king. There ought 
to be much consolation to you to know this fact. You have suf- 
fered a great deal, and have been brought very low, but you have 
not suffered more, or been more degraded than my father, who was 
long in exile and poverty in this country ; but there is this differ- 
ence between him and you, that he was all along aware of his high 
birth, whereas you have been spared the knowledge of your origin." 

When the Prince had said this, I was much overcome, and 
thrown into a. state of mind which you can easily imagine. In fact 
I hardly knew what to do or say, and my feelings were so much 
excited that I was like one in a dream, and much was said between 
us of which I can give but an indistinct account. However, I 
remember, I told him, his communication was so startling and un- 



Ml 

expected, that he must forgive me for being incredulous, and that 
really I was " between two." 

" "What do you mean," he said, " by being ' between two V " 
I replied that, on the one hand, it scarcely seemed to me, he 
could believe what he said, and on the other, I feared he might be 
under some mistake as to the person. He assured me, how- 
ever, he would not trifle with my feelings on such a subject, but 
spoke the simple truth, and that in regard to the identity of 
the person, he had ample means in his possession to satisfy me 
there was no mistake whatever. I then requested him to pro- 
ceed with the disclosure already partly made, and to inform 
me in full of the secret of my birth. He replied that in doing so, 
it was necessary that a certain process should be gone through in 
order to guard the interest of all parties concerned. I inquired 
what kind of process he meant. Upon this the Prince rose and 
went to his trunk, which was in the room, and took from it a 
parchment which he laid on the table, and set before me, that I 
might read and give him my determination in regard to it. There 
were also on the table pen and ink and wax, and he placed there 
a governmental seal of France, the one, if I mistake not, used under 
the old monarchy. It was of precious metal, but whether of gold 
or silver, or a compound of both, I cannot say. I think, on reflec- 
tion, the latter; but I may be mistaken, for my mind was so bewil- 
dered, and agitated, and engrossed with one absorbing question, 
that things which at another time would have made a strong 
impression on me were scarcely noticed, although I must confess 
that when I knew the whole, the sight of the seal put before me by 
a member of the family of Orleans stirred my indignation. The 
document which the Prince placed before me was very handsomely 
written, in double parallel columns of French and English. I con- 
tinued intently reading and considering it for a space of four or five 
hours. During this time the Prince left me undisturbed, remaining 
for the most part in the room, but he went out three or four times. 
The purport of the document, which I read repeatedly word by 

16 



362 THE LOST PRINCE. 

word, comparing the French with the English, was this : it was a 
solemn abdication of the crown of France in favor of Louis 
Philippe, by Charles Louis, the son of Louis XVI., who was styled 
Louis XVIL, King of France and Navarre, with all accompanying 
names and titles of honor, according to the custom of the old 
French monarchy, together with a minute specification in legal 
phraseology of the conditions, and considerations, and provisos, 
upon which the abdication was made. These conditions were, in 
brief, that a princely establishment should be secured to me either 
in this country or in France, at my option, and that Louis Philippe 
would pledge himself on his part to secure the restoration, or an 
equivalent for it, of all the private property of the royal family 
rightfully belonging to me, which had been confiscated in France 
during the Kevolution, or in any way got into other hands. Now 
you may ask me why I did not retain, at all hazards, this docu- 
ment, or, at any rate, take a copy of it; but it is very easy for 
you, sitting quietly there, to prescribe the course which prudence 
and self-interest would dictate. A day or two afterwards all these 
points, and the different lights in which the thing might be viewed, 
came to my mind ; but at the moment I thought of nothing except 
the question of acceptance or rejection. And then, remember, the 
sudden manner in which the whole affair came upon me, and the 
natural timidity and bashfulness of one who had always considered 
himself of such obscure rank, when called, without preparation, to 
discuss such topics with a man of high position like the Prince. 
Besides which, my word of honor had been so recently and 
solemnly pledged, and a sense of personal dignity excited by the 
disclosures of the Prince, that I never so much as thought of taking 
any advantage of the circumstances, but simply and solely whether 
or not I should sign my name, and set my seal to a deliberate sur- 
render of my rights and those of my family. It was a deeply 
painful and harrowing time, and I cannot tell you, and you cannot 
imagine, how I felt when trying to decide this question. At 
length I made my decision, and rose, and told the Prince that I 



Putnam's magazine. 363 

had considered the matter fully in all its aspects, and was prepared 
to give him ray definite answer upon the subject ; and then went 
on to say, that whatever might be the personal consequences to 
myself, I felt that I could not be the instrument of bartering away 
with my own hand, the rights pertaining to me by my birth, and 
sacrificing the interests of my family, and that I could only give to 
him the answer which De Provence gave to the ambassador of 
Napoleon at Warsaw, " Though I am in poverty and exile I will 
not sacrifice my honor." 

The Prince upon this assumed a loud tone, and accused me of 
ingratitude in trampling on the overtures of the king, his father, 
who, he said, was actuated, in making the proposition, more by 
feelings of kindness and pity towards me than by any other consi- 
deration, since his claim to the French throne rested on an entirely 
different basis to mine, viz. not that of hereditary descent, but of 
popular election. When he spoke in this strain I spoke loud also, 
,and said, that as he, by his disclosure, had put me in the position 
of a superior, I must assume that position, and frankly say that my 
indignation was stirred by the memory, that one of the family of 
Orleans had imbrued his hands in my father's blood, and that 
another now wished to obtain from me an abdication of the 
throne. When I spoke of superiority, the Prince immediately 
assumed a respectful attitude, and remained silent for several min- 
utes. It had now grown very late, and we parted, with a request 
from him that I would reconsider the proposal of his father, and 
not be too hasty in my decision. I returned to my father-in-law's, 
and the next day saw the Prince again, and on his renewal of the 
subject gave him a similar answer. Before he went away he said, 
' Though we part, I hope we part friends.' For years I said Httle 
on the subject, nntil I received a letter from Mr. Kimball, dated at 
Baton Rouge, informing me of the dying statements of Belanger, 
and then, when this report came from the south confirming what 
the Prince had said, the thing assumed a different aspect. This let- 
ter is, I think, among my papers at Green Bay, but for years I have 



364 THE LOST PRINCE. 

kept a minute journal of everything which has occurred to me, 
and have, no doubt, an abstract of it at Hogansburg. Our conver- 
sation to-night will go down." 

1 was much struck with the little value, in point of evidence, 
which Mr. Williams seems to have attached to the Prince's asserted 
disclosures. After giving me the above account, however, he 
added — " I see more and more, that the matter rests between the 
Prince and myself, and I am quite willing that it should. I have 
been in hopes that some movement would be made in Europe in my 
favor ; but, as you say, the affair must be begun here, and I will let 
the world know all. The Prince cannot deny what I say, and my 
impression is that he will keep entirely silent." 

" But silence will be equivalent to confession." 

" It will be so." 

At this time, I learned that Mr, Williams had kept a journal 
during the greater portion of his life. He mentioned the circum- 
stance casually, but seemed to have no idea that it could be of any 
service as evidence. I inquired if he had preserved any contempo- 
rary record of his interview and conversations with the Prince ? 
He replied, he believed he had, but it was a long time since he had 
examined his old papers, and a great portion of them were at Green 
Bay — but, possibly, some of the journals might be at Hogansburg. 
The next tin^e he went to the north, he brought me the portions 
of his journal relave to 1841 and 1848. The reader, who, by this 
time, has had sufficient evidence of a fact which General Cass con- 
siders apocryphal, is in a better condition than formerly to judge 
of the importance to be attached to these documents. I wish much 
that space would permit me to present the whole of the journal for 
the year 1841. I will give some copious extracts, because it is 
necessary to exhibit some picture of his mind and life at a time 
when not occupied with any parochial charge. 

JOUENAL FOR 1841. 
" Green Bay, Jan. 1, 1841 — Thanks be to God, I am permitted onC6 



PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. 365 

more to see another year. How numerous have been the mercies of God 
towards me in the year past, and what thanks have I returned to the God 
of all mercies for the blessings he has conferred upon me ? Bless the Lord, 
my soul, and give him thanks for all his benefits. May I be humble for 
my ingratitude to that blessed God who has sustained my life to this time. 
0, Holy Father, enable me, by thy heavenly grace, to devote all my time 
and talents to thy honor and glory, and at last, by thy great mercy and 
the merits of my Saviour, may I be admitted to thy Heavenly Kingdom. 

" Little Kahalin^ Jan. 3. — It has been an unpleasant day. I read much 
all day in the Holy Scriptures. Somewhat indisposed. 

* ******* 

'■''Jail. 17, Sunday livening. — I had a pleasant interview with several 
of the Oneidas, who are inquiring the way of salvation. I pointed out to 
them the proper and only object of their faith, the Lord Jesus Christ. I 
explained to them several passages of Scripture. 

'•'•Jan. 18 — I went down to Green Bay, called upon the Ptev. Mr. Potter, 
dined with him. There was a discussion between us upon the doctrine of 
the saints' perseverance. 

'•'Jan. 22, Friday. — Went down to Green Bay to pay Judge A. $25, 
and had a long conversation about the Church. He is somewhat loose in 
his principles, yet he would be a churchman. Sanctification of the heart 
was strongly held up to him. 

'•'Jan. 23, Saturday. — I am preparing to-day to officiate to-morrow. 
0, my Heavenly Father, prepare my heart for the services. May I be 
sincere and devout in my attendance upon thee, and give me grace and 
strength to proclaim thy Holy Gospel in a suitable manner. 

* * * * * * * * 

" Green Bay., Feb. 4, 1841. — I came down in haste this morning to visit 
a sick man — he is in a dangerous situation, both in soul and body. I have 
administered to him all the consolation which the Christian religion affords, 
and the prayers of the Church. 

" Green Bay^ Feb 5, Friday. — Called again upon the sick man ; he is 
somewhat better. I again exhorted him to have a lively faith in the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

******** 

" Feb. 15. — Our son is much better to-day, and I hope he will continue 



366 THE LOST PRINCE. 

to amend. The weather is fine. I went to the sugar camp. The Indian 
boy knocks the snow from the roof, and I arrange the sap dishes. The 
Oneidas have been with us, and communicated to me many unpleasant 
news in relation to their missionary. I exhorted them to live m peace 
with him and adhere to his instructions. 

'■'■Feb. 16. — I have been at Duck Creek, and administered baptism to a 
sick child. I believe it is now sick to death. May God receive it to eternal 
glory. I saw many of my Oneida friends, and they wished me to come 
back to them. 

" Feb. 19, Friday. — Very cold, but the sky clear. "Went out to the sugar 
camp to see it was arranged and put in order, I saw several deer and 
wolves. My horse and myself were in the water some time, but we extri- 
cated ourselves after a hard struggle, by the aid of a Frenchman and an 
Indian, who had a hearty laugh at my misfortune. 

******** 
" April 10. — Mrs. Williams returned from the sugar camp, where she 
has been superintending, for three weeks past, the making of sugar. I 
have been back and forth to see the men did their duty. We have made 
at least 1000 lbs. of fine sugar. I have been left nearly for weeks alone. 
I cooked myself and took care of the cattle. 

******** 
'■'■May 20. — Went down to Green Bay, and had an interview with Mr. 
Whitney in relation to our landed property ; but no good resulted from it. 
It is hard upon us. 

******** 
" May 30. — I am still in a feeble state of health, but recovering in a 
gradual manner. The physician is doing what he can for me. 

******** 
'■'■June 11. — How many painful tasks I have to perform. To-day I 
visited a sick man who professes to be a churchman, from Mass., and 
would have me visit him, as he understood I was a minister of the Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church. I did all the church required of me, as one of its 
ministers, towards the sick man. I exhorted him to have faith in Christ 
and repentance towards God." 

» * ♦ * ♦ * ♦♦ 

On June 22, 1841, Mr. Williams and his son set out on board the 



Putnam's magazine, 367 

De Witt Clinton, Capt. Squares, with the intention of going into 
the State of New York, and on Tuesday, June 29, reached Oneida. 
On Ills way to New York he was taken sick at Cahoes, and sent a 
Mr. Wilkinson to the city with letters to Mr. Thomas L. Ogden. 
His indisposition continued for several weeks. 

On Tuesday, October 1, occurs the following entry : — 

"We returned to-day from owr journey to St. Regis; we went in a 
wagon all the way, and returned by the same route. We found pur 
friends all well. We put up with Bowker, where I received all my Indian 
friends who wished to see me. I had an interview with the American 
chiefs, who were much troubled with the $500 which they received from 
the State of New York. The British part of the tribe are claiming for a 
portion of the same, but the American part are opposed to this claim. 
There has been a great altercation between the two parties, in relation to 
this affair. By the request of the two parties, the British and American 
commissioners are appointed to adjust this matter. I am strongly urged 
by the American party to remain and sustain their claim; but there are 
certain circmnstances which have come to my knowledge, which hasten me 
to return as soon as possible to Green Bay. I am greatly disappointed in 
regard to my business with Mr. Ogden, which was the principal object of 
this journey. My time and expense are lost to me. We shall return to- 
morrow." 

The reader will here observe, there was important business tend- 
ing to detain Mr. Williams at St. Regis ; but, simultaneously with 
the reception of information from Thomas L. Ogden, concerning 
his private affairs, he learnt something which obliged him to return 
immediately homeward. Let him now read the following cer- 
tificate : — 

"I hereby certify, that, in the year 1841, the Rev. Eleazar WilUamswaa 
staying at my house, in Hogansburg, and left, abruptly, to go to the west, 
without concluding his business; and, in a letter received from him, shortly 
afterwards, from Green Bay, he informed me that the cause of his abrupt 
departure was an intimation which he had received of the visit of 
the Prince de Joinville, to Green Bay. I have read a copy of the 



368 THE LOST PRINCE.. 

letter then written me^ contained in his letter-book, and recognise 
it as being correct. It is possible that I may have the letter itself among 
my papers, and I will search for it ; but, at any rate, there can be no doubt 
as to the fact that he did write the passage in question, as I recol- 
lect it perfectly. 

'Elias Bowker. 
" ILoganshurg^ August 24, 1853." 

The letter referred to by Mr. Bowker bears date December 27, 
1841 ; and the passage with which we are concerned, is as follows : 

" I am anxious to learn what maybe the decision of the American and Bri- 
tish commissioners, who were about to meet and act as judges over the $500. 
At the time I left Hogansburg, Mr. Eldridge promised to write and inform 
me the result of the above meeting of the commissioners, but no commu- 
nication have I received as yet from that gentleman. Will you be pleased 
to inform him that I should be happy to hear from him. It was my 
intention to remain in Hogansburg, till after the meeting of the commis- 
sioners, but I was hindered in consequence of the intimation of the Prince 
de Joinville of visiting Green Bay, and I was just in time to meet him on 
the route." 

Thus, although, we have not, as yet, been so fortunate as to dis- 
cover the letter of Mr. Thomas L. Ogden, circumstances come in to 
supply, almost entirely, the deficiency ; and, if the reader could 
form a proper judgment of the immense mass of Mr. Williams's 
papers, of all kinds, and the condition that they are in, he would 
only wonder that anything could be found, and the measure of 
exactness attained, which, I hope, has been arrived at. There are, 
at the present moment, several large boxes of papers, &c., in 
Ogdensburg, and it is possible that further light may be derived 
from them. But, to continue the journal : — 

" Syractise^ October 4, Monday. — Went out and visited my Onondag 
friends. I am still feeble. 

" Detroit^ October 11, Monday . — Arrived here this morning, and expect 
to go on this afternoon. My reflections to-day and yesterday upon death, 
judgment, and eternity, have been lively. 0, that they may lead 



Putnam's magazine. 36'^, 

me to live more in preparation for . those tsolemn events. 0, merciful 
Father, grant me true contrition, and unfeigned sorrow, for all I 
have thought and done amiss ; quicken me by Thy Holy Spirit, and enable 
me to live to Thee, and to glorify Thee in my body and my spirit, which 
are thine. I trust the siclmess with which I have been afflicted has a ten- 
dency to drive me to think more upon God. 

" October 14. — 0?t board of the steamer. — I have written to Mr. Ogden, 
General Potter, and Mr. Le Fort, the Onondaga chief. 

" October 15, Friday Evening. — On Lake Huron, the day has been very 
pleasant. By the request of the passengers, I officiated this evening — 
preached from Luke vi. 12. The audience were very attentive. I am 
again afflicted with a severe pain in my left side. May I feel that I am 
in the midst of death, and so number my days that I may apply my heart 
unto wisdom. My son is somewhat unwell." 

****** 

Mac/cinac^ Oct. 16, Saturday. — The steamer arrived here at two o'clock, 
p. M. My son is somewhat indisposed, and on that account I am more 
willing to remain here, imtil the Green Bay boat comes. 

I have had a pleasant interview with the Rev. Mr. Coit, of the Congre- 
gationalist Church. Mr. C. has spent his time much among the Chippe- 
way Indians. In his labors of love he has been successful. I trust many 
souls have been converted under his ministry. Evening. — It is proposed 
to have the Divine Service to-morrow at the Presbyterian Meeting-house. 
In the morning I am to officiate. 

Mackinac, Oct. 17, Sunday Evening. — I performed the service this 
morning — all the gentlemen of the garrison, the soldiers and the citizens 
of the place were in attendance. My subject was upon Apostasy, which 

gave great offence to Mr. . I find he has been excommunicated for his 

apostasy. Trutli will have its own weight upon the guilty conscience. 
Rev. Mr. Coit preached this afternoon to the same congregation ; his dis- 
course was well adapted to the occasion, and was heard with much atten- 
tion. Several gentlemen of the place called upon me this evening, and I 
had a pleasant interview with them. I am invited to administer holy 
Baptism to-morrow morning. 

Two soldiers called and asked for Prayer-books. I was only able to give 
them one, which was accompanied with some tracts. 

16* 



870 THE LOST PRINCE. 

My son is much better — still complains of pain in the head. May God 
give him grace to be submissive to his Divine will. 

On Lake Michigan^ Oct, 18, Monday. — The regular steamer for Green 
Bay (for w^hich we have been waiting), arrived in the port of Mackinac 
to-day, at twelve o'clock. His royal highness, Prince de Joinville, and 
his suite, were among the passengers. On landing, the Prince and his 
party went immediately to visit the Arch Rock. In the meantime I had 
an interview, with Captain Shook, of the steamer, who stated that the 
Prince had made inquiries of him, two or three times since leaving Buffalo, 
about Mr. Williams, the missionary to the Indians at Green Bay, and that 
as he knew no other gentleman in that capacity excepting myself, I must 
be the person, the object of his inquiry. I replied, ' that cannot be. Cap- 
tain. He must mean another person, as I have no acquaintance with the 
Prince.'* 

I shall now inform the Prince, said the Captain, that there is a gentle- 
man on board, of the same name as that of his inquiry, who is a mission- 

* An obvious difficulty here presents itself, which was commented on upon the first 
publication of the affair, in February, and which the production of the fresh evidence, 
showing that he went out west expressly to meet the Prince de Joinville renders more 
startling. In reply to the captain's information that the Prince had inquired after him, 
he immediately says, "That cannot be, captain. He must mean another person, as I 
have no acquaintance with the Prince." Now, in explanation of the apparent dis- 
crepancy, I would remark — 1. That it is true Mr. Williams went to the West to meet 
the Prince de Joinville, because the letter to Mr. Bowker, and the testimony of that 
gentleman, taken in conjunction with his journal, prove he did so, and that it is also 
true, the conversation recorded above occurred, because Captain Shook, as will here- 
after be shown, confirms the statement of the journal. Both facts then stand, and 
there is nothing to prejudice the entire veracity of Mr. Williams's statements. The 
only question is, what was his meaning in his reply to the captain. I answer, simply 
to express the idea he afterwards advanced to the Prince, viz. that he imagined De 
Joinville himself mistook him for some other person. Though he had hastened his 
return to Green Bay, in consequence of the intimation from Mr. Ogden, he yet was 
unable to account for the anxiety of the Prince to see him, and, naturally enough, 
supposed it was founded on misconception, as he had no acquaintance with him. To 
this expression of doubt was added, as appears from his other account, a jocose 
remark, which shows how unsuspicious he was of what was coming — " Oh, I am a 
great man, and great men will seek me out." 



Putnam's magazine. 871 

ary to the Indians at Green Bay. Upon this, the Captain left me, and in 
about half an hour, he returned, and was followed by a gentleman, to 
whom I was introduced as the Prince de Joinville. I was struck at the 
manner of his salutation. He appeared to be surprised and amazed, aa 
he grasped my hand in both of his, which was accompanied by strong 
and cheering gratulations of his having had an opportunity to meet me, 
and that upon the surface of one of the inland seas in the Western world, 
"Amazing sight !" he continued, "it is what I have wished to see for 
this long time. I trust I shall not be intruding too much on your feelings 
and patience, were I to ask some questions in relation to your past and 
present life among the Indians. We, the Europeans, to satisfy curiosity are 
sometimes too inquisitive. But I presume. Rev. sir, it will be a pleasure 
to you to satisfy the curiosity of the stranger now before you, who is ~tra- 
velling over the country and lakes which were first discovered }iy our fore- 
fathers." His eyes were intently fixed upon me — eyeing my person from 
the crown of my head to the sole of my feet. 

The Prince in his cursory remarks upon the first adventures of the French 
in these western wilds was interesting. He spoke of La Salle, Fathers 
Hennepin, and Marquette (the latter, the first discoverer of the river 
Mississippi) in strains of commendation, as men of great courage, and pos- 
sessing the spirit of enterprise in an unparalleled degree. 

He spoke also with regret of the loss of Canada to France. He would 
attribute this to the want of energy and foresight in the ministry ; that 
France could have easily, at that period, sent twenty thousand men into 
Canada, to maintain her possessions in that quarter, as her naval force was 
then nearly equal to that of England. 

October 19, Tuesday. — This morning the Prince resumed his observations 
upon the French Eevolution — its rise, its progress, and its efiects upon 
France, and more particularly to the United States, which were afi"ecting 
and touching in the exti-eme. The awful catastrophe that fell upon France, 
the dissolution of the royal family, and the destruction of the king, he 
strongly asserted originated from the American revolution, and that the 
people in the United States can never be too grateful to the unfortunate 
Louis XVI. for his powerful interposition in their behalf. "It is very 
evident," said he, " they do not duly appreciate the aid he afforded them in 



372 THE LOST PRINCE. 

the day of distress. It is very evident also, that, from the very day when 
the Court of Versailles formed an alliance with America, the operations of 
the British against them were paralyzed ; the naval forc6 of France ren- 
dered more essential service to their cause than her land force. The At- 
lantic sea was soon covered with ships-of-war and privateers ; these were 
a formidable barrier against England in sending her troops and munitions 
of war to America. In this war France lost thirty-five thousand men and 
twenty-five ships of the line. But, for these powerful aids, no monuments 
are raised to perpetuate thek memory. Louis XVI. ought to be placed 
next to General Washington as a liberator of the American people. His 
interference in their behalf is attributed altogether to his political finesse 
and his hatred against England ; hence he is not entitled to their praise or 
thanks. But, Rev. sir, were the American people duly to consider the im- 
portant aid he gave them in their struggle with the mother country, its 
happy result, and the dreadful catastrophe that fell upon his government, 
his family, and himself; he would truly and justly be considered as a mar- 
tyr to American independence. The king encountered an opposition from 
the Count de Vergennes and the Court, when he took the sufiering cause 
of the Americans in hand. He was moved by the representations of the 
American commissioners, and the Queen was no less urgent to save the 
sinking cause of the American people. My grandfather and father were 
present when the last struggle took place between the King and the minis- 
try upon the article of alliance with the United Colonies of America. That 
day — it was a happy day for Americans — but for the King, it was the day 
of his death! Yes, Rev. sir, on that day, when the King put his name 
to the instrument, he sealed his death-warrant. The ingratitude of the 
American people towards the King's memory is one of the darkest stains 
upon the stars and stripes of the American flag and independence." 

This afternoon the Prince expressed his wish to tak^ my son with him to 
France for an education. In connection with this he was informed that 
we had an infant who had not yet received baptism. He readily consented 
to stand as a godfather, and Would give the name of his mother to the 
child. But, alas ! on my first landing I received the melancholy intelli- 
gence that the lovely babe was in her grave — ^buried on the preceding Sun- 
day, service performed by the Rev. Mr. Porter, of the Congregationalist 



Putnam's magazine. 873 

Church. When the news was communicated to the Prince, he appeared to 
sympathise with me, and remarked, taking me by the hand, " Descendant 
of a suflfering race, may you be supported in this affliction." 

About ten o'clock, the Prince was pleased to enter into his remarks more 
particularly, upon the family of the unfortunate king, which were, at first 
with me, somewhat cimous and interesting; but as he proceeded in his 
narration, my feelings were greatly excited, as it filled ray inward soul with 
poignant grief and sorrow, which were inexpressible. The intelligence was 
not only new but awful in its nature To learn, for the first time, that I 
am connected by consanguinity with those whose history I had read with 
so much interest ; and for whose sufferings in prison, and the manner of 
their deaths, I had moistened my cheeks with sympathetic tears. Is it so ? 
Is it true, that I am among the number, who are thus destined to such de- 
gradation — from a mighty power to a helpless prisoner of the state — from a 
palace to a prison and dungeon — to be exiled from one of the finest empires 
in Europe, and to be a wanderer in the wilds of America — from the society 
of the most polite and accomplished courtiers, to be associated with the 
ignorant and degraded Indians ? Degraded as they are, as to civilization 
and polite arts, yet I am consoled at the idea, that I am. among the lords 
of the soil of this western continent, who are are as precious in the sight of 
Heaven as the usurpers of their territories ! my God, am I thus des- 
tined ! " Thy will be done." To be informed that I had rights in Europe, 
and one of these was to be the first over a mighty kingdom ; and this right 
is demanded of me, to surrender, for an ample and splendid establishment. 
The intelligence was so unexpected, my mind was paralyzed for a moment ; 
it was overwhelming to my feelings. There was a tremor in my whole 
system, accompanied with a cold perspiration. The Prince saw my agita- 
tion, and left the room, with an excuse, for ten or fifteen minutes. 

A splendid parchment was spread before me for signature, to be affixed 
with the stamp and seal of Louis XVI. After consideration of several 
hours, weighing the subject with much and cool deliberation, it was res- 
pectfully refused. In those awful and momentous moments, it was happy 
that my mind was carried to the similar proposition and offers made to 
Louis XVIIL, by Napoleon, in 1802. Being impelled from a sense of duty 
to sustain the honor of kings for centuries, the same answer was given 



374 THE LOST PRINCE. 

— " Though I am in poverty, sorrow, and exile, I shall not sacrifice my 
honor." 

Gracious God ! What scene am I passing through this night ? Is it 
in reality, or a dream ? My refusal to the demand made of me, I am 
sure can be no earthly good to me, but I save my honor, and it may be for 
the benefit of the generations yet unborn. It is the will of Heaven. I am 
in a state of obscurity. So shall I remain while in this pilgrimage state. 
I will endeavor, with all humility, to serve the King of Heaven, and to ad- 
vance his holy cause among the ignorant and benighted people, which has 
been my delight. 

Although the unexpected intelligence is a new source of trouble, which 
is already working in my inward soul with inexpressible sorrow, which 
will accompany me to my grave ; yet I trust, that Almighty arm, which 
has hitherto " preserved me, will now sustain me. To the God of my sal- 
vation I fly for comfort and consolation, in this hour of distress. Let Christ 
be all, and in all. Saviour of the world, have mercy upon thy unworthy 
servant," and for the glory of thy name, turn from him all those evils that 
he most justly has deserved ; and grant, that in all his troubles, he may put 
his whole trust and confidence in thy mercy, and ever more serve thee in 
holiriess and pureness of living, to thy honor and glory. " For with God 
nothing is impossible." All that I have heard I will lay up in my heart, 
with the greatest secreyy. 

October 21, Thursday. — The Prince and suite left Green Bay yesterday, 
at twelve o'clock, and lodged last night at Capt. John McCarty's on the 
opposite side of the river to my residence. It rained all the afternoon. 

The adieus between the Prince and myself were affectionate ; he pro- 
mised to write me, on his arrival at New York. The gentlemen officers 
presented me with their cards ; were urgent to give them a call, should I 
ever visit France. May the best blessing of Heaven rest upon the whole 
party. 

It is impossible to know how other persons are affected by this 
journal, but, under the proved circumstances of bis having kept 
such a record, with more or less regularity, all his life, and the 
important entry, concerning his interview with the Prince de 
Joinville, occurring in the very midst of the yearly chronicle, and 
fortified, both as to character and authenticity, by all that precedes, 



875 

and, as we shall see, by all that follows, it appears to me a testi- 
mony, which a reasonable person cannot lightly set aside. There 
is, it is true, much about the whole affair, passing strange, but, 
as regards the conduct of Mr. Williams, it is characteristically con- 
gruous, even in the midst of the eccentricity it exhibits. The 
conduct, throughout, is of a piece with the man. There is a 
singular mixture of simplicity, nobility, good feeling, absence of 
worldly tact and cunning, and a mode of viewing things, natural in 
one accustomed to the councils of the children of the forest ; in 
which, when unpolluted by the intrusion of Anglo-Saxon chicanery, 
abstract right and justice are the fundamental considerations. He 
was, also, evidently bewildered by the strangeness of the event, and 
had no idea of turning it to his pecuniary advantage, which, in 
some minds, would have been the principal consideration. Even 
the manner in which he dismisses the whole party, with a blessing, 
is in keeping with the habit, which may be observed throughout 
the journals of Mr. Williams, of bestowing a benediction on every 
one, friend or foe, and as Mr. John Jay has well remarked, in a 
letter on the subject, is also in accordance with the forgiving dis- 
position, history attributes to Louis XYII. 

To regard this document as a forgery, you must suppose a noble 
and pious mind guilty of an amount of deception, absolutely unpar- 
alleled, and that, too, without any object; for it has evidently been 
written many years, and would never have been produced to the 
world but for me. Mr. Williams considered it a thing of no 
moment, and never dreamt of exhibiting it as evidence, and, in fact, 
ridiculed the idea, that anything which came from him, would be 
received by the public, in proof of his assertions. He looked upon 
his joui-nal merely as repetition of his statement, whereas, under 
the circumstances, and especially the fortuitous manner in which 
the whole- subject has been brought up, without any agency on his 
part, it has all the force of distinct, separate testimony. This will be 
exhibited more strongly as ^YQ proceed. 

" October 23, Satmday. — I have commenced to collect materials for 



si 6 THE LOST PRINCE. 

letter to be sent to the Prince de Joinville, in compliance with his request. 
My mind has been agitated since his departure, in consequence of the intel- 
ligence he communicated to me, which is startling in its nature. May God 
support me in these trying times, and keep ray mind in a proper frame. 

^'Little Kakalin, Oct. 26. — Went down the bay; dined with Mr. Quin- 
dre. His lady (a K,oman Catholic) informed me that the- priest, Rev. Mr. 
Bondual, stated to her that the Prince was much pleased and highly grati- 
fied with his interview with me, and that the information I had communi- 
cated to him of the first visits of the French traders into this section of the 
country, was of great value to him, &c. I heard from the Prince this 
afternoon. I find he and his party had lodged at Cato's (a black man), in 
Stockbridge woods. This has created much laughter among some, as I 
understand. He was compelled to this as there was no other house near, 
it being already dark and in the midst of a heavy rain. 

******** 

" Oct. 31, Stinday Evening. — This has been a solemn day with me, on 
several accounts. My reflections have been upon my short-comings to the 
great duties enjoined upon me by that holy religion which I profess. Why 
is it I am so much troubled with my spiritual state ? As to my foreign 
birth, it is not only new to me, but it is awful. This has changed my 
feelings materially. I am an unhappy man ; and in my sorrow and moiwn- 
ful state I would often, with a sigh, cry out. my father ! my mother ! 
It is done — it is past ; and, my God, I would humbly submit to thy holy 
will in that which thou hast done towards us. Thou hast dealt towards 
us as thou didst towards Nebuchadnezzar in the days of old. We are 
afflicted, and in a situation of degradation and poverty. Shall we remain 
thus till we know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and 
giveth it to whoinsoever he wilt ? Holy Father, remember not our off"ences, 
nor the offences of our forefathers, neither take thou vengeance of our sins. 
Spare us, Good Lord, whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood, 
and be not angry with us for ever. grant me grace to consecrate myself 
entirely to thy service, and whatever painful trials I may be called on to 
sustain, wilt Thou support me under them and at length deliver me from 
them for Christ's sake. 

******** 

"iVov. 18 — I have just returned firom the Bay, and saw Mr. Ellis, who 



311 

informed me Mr. Whitney has threatened to go against us in a suit. I 
have engaged Mr. F. to attend to this. 

******** 
" Nov. 30. — From some circumstances which have transpired within two 
days past connected with the intelligence I have received from the Prince 
de Joinville, my mind has been, and is now, greatly exercised. Why 
should I think on this subject, which is so unpleasant, or rather so afflictive? 
Yet it obtrudes itself, as it were into my mind in spite of my resistance. 
0, the fate of my dearest friends ! My soul is troubled within me, at 
times, on account of them. I seek comfort and rest, but I find none. The 
awful intelligence has made me wretched, to which no language, no con- 
ception, can be true. Hours have I spent in the solitary wilderness, 
mourning over my fate and the fate of my family. Why was it permitted 
that I should know this ? But to God, the Judge of all, I leave it. 

******** 

'■'■Dec. 16. — Although I have had it in my head that I would read the 
history uf the French Revolution, I have been afraid to read anything of 
the kind ; but at length I have been induced to read a certain author, but 
my mind has been too much excited by the work, so that I have returned 
it to the owner. 

******** 

" J9ec. 24. — I am preparing to go down to the Bay to attend the Christ- 
mass service at the Episcopal church. Pleasant day. Somewhat indis- 
posed. 

Dec. 25, Baturday. — This has been a good day to me for my religious 
exercises. blessed Jesus, I praise thee that thou wert manifested in the 
flesh to be the Saviour of the world. Save me from my sins 1 humbly 
beseech thee." 

Those who have objected to the truth of the statement of Mr. 
Williams, on account of the absence of pecuniary tact, in his deal- 
ings with the Prince, by which he failed to secure the tempting 
worldly advantages presented to him, may, when they read these 
extracts from his journal, acknowledge that, possibly, there may be 
moments and straits in existence, when the soul cannot turn it3 



378 THE LOST PRINCE. 

regards to dollars and cents, and when the weight of sorrow 
descends with a crushing and stupefying power, permitting only 
the appalling darkness of life's tragedy to be felt and seen. It may be 
lack of worldly wisdom, but, I own, I cannot sympathize with those 
who conceive, it would have been more natural for Mr. Williams, 
instead of acting in the high-spirited and unselfish manner, he 
describes, to have regarded the information of the Prince, merely in 
the light of a pecuniary God-send, and endeavored to see how much 
he could make of it. On the contrary, it was just the intelligence 
to drive the thought of money from the mind. It was like a thun- 
derbolt, an avalanche, or anything that is most sudden and most 
terrible. 

The necessities of space compel me now to pass on, without fur- 
ther comment, to the journal for 1848, when he received informa- 
tion of the dying disclosures of Bellanger, in New Orleans. The 
reader must remember that seven years have elapsed since first the 
tidings of his origin were communicated to him. 

" Green Bay, March 10. — In the letter I have received from Mr. Thos. 
Kimball, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ray curiosity is somewhat excited, 
and it may be a novel news. 

" He states that the information he received from a respectable gentleman 
was such a startling news with him, as to induce him to communicate the 
intelligence to the person who was the subject of it, and with whom he was 
acquainted. He states by the death (in January last) of an aged and 
respectable French gentleman, either in New Orleans or Helena, that he 
made disclosures at the last hours of his life, that he was the person who 
aided in the escape of the Dauphin, or the son of Louis XVI., King of 
France, from the temple in 1795; his transportation to North America, 
and his adoption among the Indians ; all this that he may live and be hidden, 
and live beyond the reach of his enemies, who had been murderers of his 
royal parents ; and that the person alluded to as the Dauphin is no other 
than the Rev. Eleazar Williams, the Missionary to the Oneida Indians; 
and that the gentleman who had the principal agency in the escape of the 
Dauphin, was strictly and solemnly bound by the sacramental oath of the 



379 



Roman Catholic Church never to disclo.se, particularly in Europe, of the 
descent or family of the royal youth whom he was about to convey to North 
America ; and that it was not until he saw himself drawing near to a close of 
his earthly career, that he would disclose the secret which had been locked 
up in his bosom for half a century ; and that he would do this the more 
cheerfully now, without infringing his conscience, because he was in 
America, and that it may be a benefit to his most dear, beloved, but unfor- 
tunate friend, the Dauphin ; in uttering the last his whole frame was 
agitated, and shed abundance of tears ; and that near one of his last excla- 
mations was, '0 ! the Dauphin ! may he be happy and restored !' 

" The intelligence is so improbable, it had no weighty nor consideration 
with me ; and thinking at the same time there may be mistake as to the 
person, I shall wait patiently the meaning of all this, for a further informa- 
tion from Mr. Kimball upon this new and mysterious subject. 

''■March 13. — Went to Green Bay, and dined with the Eev. Mr. Porter, 
and had a long conference with Judge Aindt respecting the Oneidas, with 
whom he is at war in relation to some lumber which he had purchased. 

^^ March 15. — "Went to the Sugar Camp with Mr. Wartmen to make some 
inquiries. This is a beautiful day, and it was delightful to be among the 
lofty pines. 

'•'-March 16. — Received some letters fi-om my friends in Oneida, in one of 
which I am informed that my father is in a feeble state of health. 

'•'•March 18. — I wrote to-day to the Rev. Joshua Leavitt. of Boston, in 
which I recapitulated the intelligence I had received from Mr. Kimball, in 
relation to the Dauphin of France. On mature reflection upon the subject, 
I must confess the news is becoming more startling with me. It is true 
that I have no recollection of my existence in the world until at the age 
of thirteen or fourteen : what passed with me previous I am unable to 
decipher. Since my recollection is perfect, there are some incidents con- 
nected with my life, I must confess, which are strange, and which I am 
unable to reconcile with each other. The suspicion in the minds of some 
that I am not the son of Thomas Williams may be mistaken, and the story 
of Van Derheyden of Albany, in 1814, has created in my mind an idea 
that I may be an adopted child, as I find the Iroquois have adopted more 
than sixteen persons of both sexes of the Canadian origin. 

" March 24. — ■! have written to Mr. L. of Boston, and sent the letter 



380 THE LOST PRINCE. 

containing the mysterious news in relation to my origin. Althougli this 
melancholy subject was communicated to me in 1841, and now again, it is 
renewed and brought before me from another quarter, I may truly say, that 
as often as the subject is brought to the mind the eyes of the afflicted man 
are filled with tears. 

" Yes, in 1841, when the awful intelligence was communicated to me, 
my blood seemed to chill and my heart to rush into my throat, and I became 
affected in a manner which I now find it difficult to describe. May I 
humbly submit to the will of Heaven. for more grace and Christian 
resignation ! 

'■'March 27. — Last evening there were several of the Oneidas lodged at 
my house, who made great inquiries after the history of the primitive 
church. They were referred to the day of Pentecost, and I dwelt largely 
upon it. They were very thankful for the instruction. 

" March 28. — Went to Grand Kakalin, called iipon Mr. Grignor, and 
dined with him, and soon Governor Doty joined with us. 

'^ This evening I am invited to go to the Oneida settlement, to attend the 
funeral of one of the warrior chiefs. He was a communicant. Api-il 3. 
Went to Green Bay, and was at the Fort, and had a long conversation 

with . He is an infidel. May the Lord show him the error of his 

ways. 

" I have had many such people to deal with." 

In the foregoing journal, Mr. Williams alludes to having written 
twice to the Rev. Joshua Leavitt, of Boston, in relation to the 
communication from the South. . Learning that Mr. Leavitt is now 
a resident in New York, I called on liim, and inquired what he 
remembered on the subject. lie kindly gave me the required 
information, and wrote me two letters, from which I extract the 
followiug : — 

"During my residence in Boston, from 1842 to 1848 inclusive, I was in 
correspondence with Mr. Eleazar Williams, and was visited by him several 
times, partly for relationship and partly on a matter of business, in which 
he wished my assistance. In the spring of the year 1848, I received from 
Mr. Williams one or two letters, in one of which was contained a state- 
ment concerning the decease of an old Frenchnian, who declared that the 



I 



381 

Dauphin of France was still living and in this country. This statement I 
procured to be printed in a small daily paper in Boston called the ' Chrono- 
type,' where it appeared on the 12th April, 1848. In the autumn of the 
same year, Mr. Williams called on me, and greatly astonished me by 
saying that he himself was the supposed Dauphin. He seemed much 
disturbed and distressed about the matter, and even terrified at the possible 
consequences of the disclosure, and I thought wished not to have any 
further publication on the subject if it could be avoided. He also 
expressed the regret he should feel in losiiig his cherished relationship to the 
Williams family, and declared that he should always feel towards them, an 
unabated affection?'' 

In the other letter, Mr. Leavitt, speaking of the disclosures 
made to him in the autumn of 1848, says that Mr. Williams "re- 
marked, with sadness, on the disquiet the affair had caused him, 
interfering with his chosen work of the ministry, and even filling 
him with alarm for his personal safety." In his distress of mind, it 
was natural for him to apply to Mr. Leavitt, as this gentleman is 
connected by marriage with the Williams family, and had shown 
him much kindness in his troubles. A slip from the Chronotype, 
of April 12, 1848, is before me, containing the statement referred to, 
which is nearly literal in its agreement with the journal of Mr. Wil- 
liams, except that the portion relating to himself is omitted, and 
the Island of Cuba is referred to in connection with Bellanger, which 
may probably have arisen from confounding the word Helena with 
Havana. This journal throws a curious light on the workings of 
Mr. Williams's mind. Deeply affected at first by the revelation of 
the Prince, he seems, in course of time, to have learned to treat the 
subject with indifference. It appeared to him entirely improbable. 
But the same tale comes from another quarter; and the first 
impression having faded away, it is looked upon as a novelty, and 
has no weight with him. Slowly his mind gathers itself up ; 
awakens its recollections ; renews its impressions ; combines things 
widely separated, whose connection it did not at first perceive ; and 
then anxiety begins, and he has recourse to a friend for advice ; 



382 THE LOST PRINCE. 

timidly unfolds to him his griefs and his apprehensions, and wishes 
to hush the affair up lest it should injure him. 

Having obtained from the Rev. Mr. Williams, and other available 
sources, most of the information and documents contained in this 
and the preceding chapter, I embodied the whole in an article 
which was published in " Putnam's Magazine," for February, 1853, 
the design of which was simply to awaken inquiry and investiga- 
tion, and discover, if possible, what there was to substantiate the 
conclusion, to which the representations made to me seemed to 
lead, but which were, as yet, in too crude and unconnected a form 
to base upon them any other than a hypothetical inference. Fully 
conscious of all the difficulties with which the subject was 
environed, I carefully abstained from expressing any positive 
opinion, except my conviction, that Mr. Williams was mentally and 
morally incapable of inventing the story he had told me. Having 
recapitulated the main points of asserted testimony, which I left 
for the future to prove or disprove, I went on to say : — 

Now there can be no question, that if all these points could be 
proved, the irresistible conclusion would be, that Louis XYH. and 
the Rev. Eleazar Williams are identical. Even in the imperfect 
degree in which I know and have stated them, they would carry 
conviction with them ; much more, if brought out in detail, with 
all attendant circumstances. 

Questions of identity are among the most difficult and interest- 
ing with which law is conversant. The settlement of them 
requires varied and peculiar evidence. The negative and the 
affirmative have both to be clearly shown. Two apparently 
different things must be demonstrated to be one. Resemblances 
must be proved to be not accidental, but inherent to the degree of 
sameness. 

Where the utmost stretch of human ingenuity has been used for 
concealment ; where more than half a century has passed since the 
supposed divergence of a life from its natural line ; where 
evidence, scanty at the best, has been destroyed, both purposely 



Putnam's magazine. 383 

and negligently, absolute demonstration, perhaps, cannot be 
attained ; but we may reach, even under such circumstances, a 
degree of moral certainty, second only to demonstration, and 
amply sufficient to enable a sound mind to render a decisive 
verdict, satisfactory to the intellect and the conscience. 

Now prove to me the truth of all that I have alleged as asserted 
and probable, and no course would be left but to pronounce such a 
judgment in favor of identity ; for the evidence before us goes to 
show, I apprehend, exactly what it is requisite to have shown. 

1st. That Louis XVII. did not die in 1795. 

2d. That he was carried to the region in which Mr. Williams 
spent his youth. 

8d. That Mr. Williams is not an Indian; and, 

4th. That Mr. Williams is Louis XVIL 

These are the four propositions which the case presents for proof 
— a negative and an affirmative one, with reference to each cha- 
racter, under which one and the same individual has at different 
times and places appeared. 

The testimony is multiform, direct, indirect, documentary, 
circumstantial ; but notwithstanding its exceedingly varied nature, 
it is wonderfully consistent. It would require extreme ability to 
fabricate it out of nothing — the utmost mendacity and hardihood, 
to build it up on a baseless foundation. 

The history involves many most curious inquiries into human 
motive among persons in the most widely different positions in 
life. It would be impossible, without writing a volume, to do 
justice to these. I will just indicate one or two, 

Mr. Williams asserts that the Prince de Joinville told him in the 
manner I have described, that he is the son of Louis XYI. Now 
here is the direct testimony of a responsible person to a simple fact. 
The assertion is either true or false. If false, it involves the 
degradation of Mr. Williams from the ministry. If true, it settles 
the whole question of identity, unless we can imagine it possible 
that the Prince de Joinville took the trouble of travelling from 



384 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Paris to Green Bay to speak at random, or to tell a falsehood on a 
subject of paramount importance to himself and to France. It is 
not supposable that such a person would say and do what he is 
asserted by Mr. Williams to have said and done, without having 
previously attained to the last degree of conviction pertaining to 
the possibility of human convictions, and, moreover, without being 
vested with authority from Louis Philippe himself to make the 
disclosure ; and thus his words issued from the innermost arcana 
of France, proving that not a day elapsed from June, 1795, in 
which some watchful eye did not keep knowledge of the exiled 
Prince. On the other hand, what' possible inducement can there 
be for Mr. Williams to say what is untrue on this subject ? The 
clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church value their commission 
too highly to throw it away by telling unmeaning falsehoods tend- 
ing to nothing but disgrace and ruin. Mr. Williams is, I know, a 
sane, sober-minded, practical man, who has had all his life to deal 
with the sternest realities, and I believe he speaks Avords of truth 
and soberness. He has not the capacity to invent such a dramatic 
scene as that between hira and the Prince, and if he has, he might 
long ago have turned it to account. What conceivable motive can 
such a man have to fabricate an airy and vain fiction, that he, the 
poor Indian missionary, is the descendant of long lines of Euro- 
pean kings, and that a prince royal of France, now living, and who 
can be brought face to face with him, told him so. Again, if Mr. 
Williams's statement be correct, the motives of Louis Philippe in 
making the disclosure are a problem. I am inclined to believe 
that pity and commiseration entered largely into them. At the 
same time Bellanger was living, and De Ferriere, and Le Kay. The 
secret was known in Canada, and the citizen-king may, as Mr. 
Williams writes me, have " seen an object in that quarter, who 
might sooner or later be an obstacle to his ambitious views, and _ 
defeat the permanency of his throne, and the securing of the samej ] 
to his family." As to the improbability that a poor man like Wil- 
liams would reject, on a point of honor, offers so splendid and 



PUTNAMS MAGAZINE. 385 

liberal, I own, it is great ; but his own explanation of his feelings 
is before the reader, and nothing but the regally proud and 
romantic heroism it displays, so rare in this age, renders it 
incredible. 

ISTot only the physical but the mental characteristics of Mr. "Wil- 
liams, curiously correspond with what the Dauphin would probably 
be if alive, and in such a position after such a complicated career. He 
possesses a great amount of native talent ; an easy grace and dignity 
of manner when in polite society, which seems innate ; a winning 
sweetnass of disposition, and much simplicity ; apparently warm 
religious feelings ; but his judgment in matters of self-interest is not 
of the strongest ; fluent and eloquent in diction, his ideas are not 
always well-assorted — a mystery to himself as well as to others, 
subject to perpetual questionings, .he is sometimes abrupt — accus- 
tomed to Indian life, there is semi-barbarism mingled with courtly 
grace, and roving habits with warm affections — in a word, he seems 
like one jumbled out of place by destiny, a partial wreck, shattered, 
but not broken. And the peculiarity of his character must be 
taken into account, in forming an estimate of his conduct, the sin- 
gularity of which will create in many minds a prejudice against his 
veracity, since they will be unable to understand how a poor man 
could reject offers so splendid, or a man of the world neglect the 
opportunity of establishing his regal birth, which the communica- 
tion of De Joinville afforded. In his situation they would have 
acted differently. True, but he and they are very different per- 
sons. It is but justice to say that, whatever may prove the ulti- 
mate truth of his claims, the origination of them does not rest with 
him ; unsought evidence has found him out, and new proofs are 
rising from unexpected quarters. He has never tried to make capi- 
tal of his story. The present publication does not proceed in any 
way from his suggestion, though he has given his consent to it. 

Nearly equal in importance with any point in the evidence, is the 
early idiocy of Mr. Williams corresponding with the condition in 
which the Dauphin is known to have been. It goes far to substan- 

ir 



386 THE LOST PRINCE. 

tiate the truth of the story, for since Williaras could not have beeu 
born an idiot, there must have been some fearful acts lying at the 
basis of his history to reduce him to such a condition. In all 
recorded cases in which the memory has been destroyed by sudden 
injury to the brain, the whole chain of lost knowledge has been 
brought back as by an electric shock. But, in this case, the 
destruction of memory was not sudden, but owing to the benumb- 
ing process of a long series of sufferings, mental and bodily, v/hich 
took away the power of perception, and weakened that of reten- 
tion. The soul fell into a merciful sleep, and when it again 
awakened, there was nothing to recall except a few vague ideas 
and one terrible image of the past, which was burnt into his soul. 
A draught of Lethe gave to one man two lives. Born the second 
time without birth, he who died a prince was regenerated a beggar, 
and the heir of kings surviving his own death, and the overthrow 
of his race, is metamorphosed into a red man, and having been bap- 
tized by a Romish bishop amid the pageantries of a European court, 
lives to preach the Gospel in America fifty-seven years after his 
exile. Republics, constitutions, kingdoms, and an empire, have, 
during that space, been overthrown. They who moved and ruled 
them have passed away, and the present occupant of Versailles and 
the Tuileries may follow them, while the veteran missionary is still 
in possession of his wigwam on the St. Lawrence. 

Complicated and mysterious as this matter is, it has a fearful 
simplicity when brought to a direct issue between Mr. Williams and 
the Prince de Joinville. The latter has the reputation of being a 
high-minded and honorable gentleman, and I trust will act openly 
and candidly on a question of so much importance. 



TOKENS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY. 387 



CHAPTEE XYIII. 

TOKENS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY. 

It seems necessary, briefly, to consider, in a separate chapter, the 
tokens of personal identity between Louis XVII. and the Rev. 
Eleazar "Williaras ; and I will do this without interrupting the 
thread of my narrative. This is a portion of our subject of the 
highest importance — because, were there a failure here, all other 
arguments and evidence would be of no avail. If there were cer- 
tain known, unchangeable peculiarities, in the person of the youth- 
ful king, all or any of which were absent from the person of Mr. 
Williams, it would be impossible to make out a case of identity: 
but, if it can be clearly shown, that every ascertainable peculiarity 
in the person of Louis XVIL, both natural and accidental, exists in 
the person of Mr. Williams, I have established the sine qua non, and 
laid a firm foundation on which every other portion of the evidence 

can rest. 

The publication of my article, in Putnam's Magazine, drew forth 
the almost universal criticism of the press, which was favorable, 
beyond the deserts, in a literary point of view, of a piece hastily writ- 
ten, and whose main object was to excite discussion and elicit truth. 
By many writers, it was regarded as a final argument, in a contro- 
versy it merely opened ; and thus, by some, the strength of the 
evidence, as it then stood, was much overrated ; and, by others, great 
injustice was done to me and to the historic question ; and what 
was strictly tentative, was regarded as an exhibition of credulity. 

The Eev. Mr. Williams was then staying in New York, to pre- 
pare, and simultaneously print, his translation of the prayer-book 
into Mohawk, and soon became the object of general curiosity and 
remark. Many gentlemen, and especially Frenchmen, and others 
familiar with the lineaments and peculiarities of the Bourbon family. 



388 TEE LOST PRINCE. 

called on him, to test, by personal examination, the truth of the 
asserted resemblance. It was a severe ordeal, and one I "was 
curious to see how he would pass. A person playing a part must 
almost inevitably have failed, and exhibited some sign, by over or 
under-acting, of insincerity. But, Mr. Williams had no part to play, 
and his simplicity of character, quiet, dignified, good nature, and 
tlie freedom from all apprehension, attending an honest heart, with 
nothing to conceal and nothing to pretend to, carried him safely 
through. 

I do not remember a single instance of a person leaving his pre- 
sence with an unfavorable impression — not one who did not seem 
to feel — and, in many cases, this feeling was warmly expressed — 
that, whatever might be the ultimate issue of the investigation, the 
idea of deception, on his part, was out of the question.* 

* A published account of one of these interviews is so graphic and honorable to all 
parties, that I perpetuate it in a note. It is from the pen of M. Arpin, then editor of 
the Courrier des Etats Unis. " In a modest chamber of an unpretending hotel, we 
found a man, possessed of a very simple exterior, his face quite good-looking and pre- 
possessing. He received us with cordial courtesy. Mr. Williams is the type of the 
missionary whom religion sends out among the uncivilized. He has nothing of that 
dry austerity we too frequently find among those who have the cure of souls in large 
cities. His affable manner, impressing us at once with his good natui-e, and his eye 
so readily assuming a look of gentle cheerfulness, are in harmony with the work he is 
called to fulfil. It is obvious that persuasion rather than authority is his means of 
drawing the Indian listeners within the Christian church. He is an apostle of the 
primitive style. If we were less profoundly struck than his partizans with his resem- 
blance to the Bourbons — if we do not discover in him tJie most characteristiG trait of 
the race, the Bourbon nose, we must, nevertheless, confess, that the brow and lower 
portion of the face, offer striking analogies with certain physiognomies of the family. 
Thus Mr. Williams instantly reminded us of Louis XVIII., whose features are strongly 
impressed on our memory. The sight of the respectable missionary, certainly, does 
not carry entire conviction, but it is very far from forbidding it. It only remains to 
add, that Mr. Williams has an air of perfectly good faith, and that, while our conver- 
sation with him, and deliberate scrutiny of his person have not wholly converted us, 
we are compelled to pursue the inquiry of which he is the object further — for, under- 
neath this outside, upon which candor and bonhommie are so strongly, imprinted, we 
cannot realize that either a dupe or an impostor is concealed. 

To show the impression made on M. Ai-pin's mind at the time, I may add to his nar- 
rative, that as he was bidding adieu, he said to Mr. Williams, in a tone of respectful 



I 



TOKENS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY. 389 

The result of the personal scrutiny, to which he was subjected, 
was no less favorable. The marked resemblance of person and 
physiognomy to the Bourbon family was universally admitted. He 
might differ from this or that individual of the race, in particular 
features, but the impress of blood and descent was on the man. 

But, there is one point of family resemblance so strongly marked 
that, it cannot fail to strike every attentive observer, who is 
acquainted with the Bourbon lineaments. I allude to the forma- 
tion of the lower jaw and ear. You may go back for centuries in 
the royal family, and in all their portraits, where the arrangement 
of the dress and hair permits, you will find the same marked con- 
formation, which that of Mr. Williams exhibits. The ear, large and 
full at top, lessens almost to a point at the lower extrepity, and, 
without any indentation at the bottom, joins the rounded sweep of 
the jaw. The same peculiar curve might be interchangeably used 
in the portraits of Louis XYL, Louis XVIIL, Charles X., the 
Duchess D'xingoul^me, the Due de Bordeaux, and the Rev. Eleazar 
Wilhams; and a skilful artist might amuse himself by successively 
producing the six heads on the same base line. But, the hkeness is 
not merely that of feature, but also of bodily form. There is before me 
a full length portrait of Louis XVIIL, in the dress so well described 
by Lamartine. Making allowance for its immense obesity and fan- 
tastical attire, it is the image of my friend, from top to toe ; the 
same lines in the face are there— tfie same shaped head, growing, 
as it were, without neck, out of the broad shoulders— the same 
length and squareness of body to the hips— the same short legs— 
and the hand and fingers in the same attitude most familiar in con- 
versation with Mr. Williams. 

The closer the investigation was pushed, the clearer it was seen 
that, peculiarities which, at first, excited doubt, tended more 

strongly to identification. 

but manly candor, "Were you seated on the throne of France, sir, I should deem it 
my duty to oppose you, as a Republican ; but, in your present position, a,nd for the 
truth of history, I will gladly do anything I can to aid in the investigation." 



390 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Thus the Bourbon nose, as it is called, which all the pretenders 
possessed to a marvel, was found wanting in all the portraits of the 
young Prince, whose nose corresponded, as much as that of a child 
could with a grown person's, with the nose of Mr. Williams. 
"Whoever will take the trouble of examining, will perceive, the 
Dauphin could, at no period of life, have had a strongly-marked 
acquiline nose ; and, however, such a feature is connected in most 
minds with the Bourbons, the possession of it by Mr. Williams 
would have been fatal to his identity with the Prince. In all but 
profile, however, there is no discernible difference between his nose 
and that of Louis XVIII. ; the general size, shape, and position 
of both being the same, and the central protuberance being alike, 
but more faintly indicated in one than in the other. 

So also with the color of the eyes. Those who took their 
impressions from popular histories, found difficulty in the hazel 
hue of Mr. Williams's eyes, which they expected, as those of a 
Bourbon would be blue. A member of the ISTe.v York press told 
me that, meeting Williams at the house of a friend, his impres- 
sions, otherwise favorable, were against him on this account; but 
added, he soon found he was, himself, in error, and called my 
attention to the portrait of the Dauphin, in the Bryan Gallery, in 
which the eyes are identical with those of Mr. Williams. I went 
to the Gallery, when Mr. Bryan said, he could pledge himself for 
the authenticity of the portrait, having purchased it at the sale of 
the collection of M. Prousteau de Mont Louis, in Paris, in 1851. 
This gentleman was a royalist, and enjoyed a high reputation as a 
connoiseur and collector; and his name is a sufficient guarantee 
that whatever came from his collection is genuine. In this 
portrait, not only the eyes, but the lower part of the face, jaw, 
and lips, might even now serv^e as a representation of Mr. 
Williams. It was evidently taken during his imprisonment in the 
Temple, as it bears tokens, in the emaciation of the form, and the 
pinched and painful expression of the features, of disease and suf- 
fering. The accompanying outline drawing gives a faithful repre- 



LOUIS X V I L, 

J'roni tlic -ULClure in tlie B^-yotji Gallery, JfewVoi-k . 

G. P, P UTMAM 8c 0,0 N.Y. 



TOKENS OF PEilSONA'L IDENTITY. 391 

sentation of it, which the reader caa compare with the portraits of 
Mr. AVilliams in 1806 aud 1853. 

While speaking of pictures I will introduce the testimony of the 
Chevalier Fagnani aud M. B. H. Muller, both eminent portrait 
painters in this city. 

M. Fagnani has had every means of forming a correct judgment 
on the subject, having lived, since childhood, in intimate acquaint- 
ance with the families of the Sicihan and Spanish Bourbons, of 
whom he has painted no less than ten portraits. The eyes of a 
skilful artist are not likely to be deceived by faint resemblances, nor 
to overlook indications of identity of blood, which escape an ordi- 
nary observer. He met Mr. Williams, for the first time, in a 
crowded room, and I was curious to observe his conduct on the 
accasion. Standing at some little distance at the outside of a group, 
he eyed liiin from head to foot with the calm, critical gaze with 
wliich he would have scrutinized a statue or a picture; dwelt on 
the contour of his face, the play of his features, and the manner of 
his address and conversation ; and then, as if satisfied, turned quietly 
aside. A friend, who Avas much interested in ascertaining his 
Dpinion, inquired, " Well, Fagnani, what do you think as to his 
being a Bourbon?" "I don't think at all," was the reply, "/ 

7t;?2wc." 

The following lettei-, which is of historic interest, was written 
after LI. Fagnani had repeated interviews with Mr. Williams, and 
painted the portrait from which the engraving in the frontispiece 
is taken : 

"New York, February 14, 1853. 
'' PbEV. John H. Hanson : 

" My Dear Sir. — In complying with your request to inform you of my 
impressions with regard to the identity of the P.ev. Mr. WilUams and 
Louis XVII., the Dauphin of France, and what acquaintance I have of the 
pecuhar hneaments of the Bourbon race, I must premise by informing you 
that of the immediate family of Louis XVI. I know nothing, beyond having 
seen the original portraits of them at Versailles: but with the features of 



392 THE LOST PRINCE. 

the Sicilian and Spanish Bourbons, who are closely allied by intermarriage 
as well as blood, with those of France, and strongly resemble them, I have 
been familiar from childhood. To enumerate those whose portraits I have 
painted, besides having seen and known many others, I may mention the 
Dowager Queen of Naples, mother of the present King Ferdinand 11. ; the 
Prince of Capua, and Count of Trapuna, brothers of the King, and grand- 
sons of Caroline, sister of Marie Antoinette ; Queen Christina of Spain, 
widow of Ferdinand VII. ; Isabella II., the reigning Queen of Spain ; and 
)ier sister, the Duchess of Montpensier ; and two daughters of the Infant 
Don Francis de Paul, Uncle to Queen Isabella. Of the House of Hapsburg 
I have painted the portraits of the Arch-Duke Charles, brother of the 
Emperor Francis II. ; and the Arch-Duchess Augusta, daughter of Leopold, 
the present Grand Duke of Tuscany. From the particular examination an 
artist must necessarily make of his sitters, many points strike him which 
would escape a more superficial observer. In painting the portrait of Mr. 
Williams, I noticed many of the peculiar characteristics which are devel- 
oped in a greater or less degree in most of the princes of the House of 
Bourbon whose portraits I have taken. When I first saw Mr. Williams, I 
was more particularly impressed with his resemblance to the portraits of 
Louis XVI. and XVIII. ; and the general Bourbonic outline of his face and 
head. As I conversed with him, I noticed several physiognomical details, 
which rendered the resemblance to the family more striking. The upper 
part of the face is decidedly of a Bourbon cast, while the mouth and lower 
part resemble the House of Hapsburg. I also observed, to my surprise, 
that many of his gestures were similar to those peculiar to the Bourbon 
race. 

" Had I met Mr. Williams, unconscious that he was in any way other 
than his name would indicate, I should immediately have spoken of his like- 
ness to the Bourbon family ; and although a resemblance of the kind might 
possibly be an accidental freak of nature, still, taken in connection with 
the facts you have brought before the public, and the quantity of corrobo- 
rative testimony adduced, it leaves no doubt in my mind of the very great 
probability that Mr. Williams and the Dauphin are the same person. 
Hoping that this interesting historical problem may be speedily and satis- 
factorily solved, I remain, my dear sir, very truly yours, 

" GuisEPPE Fagnani." 



TOKENS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY. 393 

M. B. H. Muller, residing in Howard street, New York, was a 
pupil of the celebrated revolutionist David, and also of Gros. He 
was employed to take, after death, the picture of Louis XVHI., of 
whom he still preserves an admirable crayon sketch. The features, 
in their deep repose, are the very image of Mr. Williams, when 
asleep. I called on M. Muller, in company with Mr. Williams and 
Mr. A. Fleming. It was in the evening, and the room, at first, but 
dimly lighted ; yet his recognition of the likeness to the Bourbon 
family w^as immediate, and his expression of it intense. As soon as 
he saw him, and almost without explanation of the cause of our 
visit, he declared the resemblance would have struck him anywhere, 
and, with characteristic nervous rapidity of action, proceeded to 
indicate the many points of marked and minute similarity. " The 
eyes, the eyes, too !" he exclaimed. " He has the eyes of the Dau- 
phin." I asked him how he knew. He replied, from seeing por- 
traits of him in France. By a strange coincidence Muller was well 
acquainted with the present Emperor while in New York, who, he 
said, had frequently sat on the old hair sofa on which Mr. Williams 
was then seated. I have elsewhere spoken of the testimony of M. 
Muller respecting the body exhibited as that of Louis XVH. in the 
Temple. 

On another occasion, a Frencli officer, who had been in the body 
guard of Louis XVHL, calling on Mr. Williams, said, the longer he 
looked at him, the more he recalled the image of the king, not only 
in feature, but in familiar indefinable gestures. 

A gentleman of high rank, on the continent, who happened to see 
him in the pulpit, immediately touched a friend who was sitting 
beside him, and said, " There, that is the Bourbon they have found, 
if there be any truth in physiognomy," and expressed his full con- 
viction, afterwards, from what he had heard in Legitimate circles, 
in Europe,' that Louis XVH. was alive, and his belief, from the pub- 
lished statements, that Mi-. Williams must be the man* 

It was often a matter of amusement to me to watch the effect of 
introduction, on some ardent, impressible Frenchman, who, previous 

17* 



894 THE LOST PRINCE. 

to seeing him, had ridiculed the affair with a " Bah, bah," but who, 
after looking on him, for a minute, and interchanging a few hurried 
words, would begin to speculate on the probable political conse- 
quences of the affair, and could hardly be made to understand that 
Mr. Williams was a clergyman, and made no political pretensions. 

It has not unfrequently happened, that persons meeting him 
casually in the streets, for the first time, have, without any other 
clue, but the resemblance, at once addressed him by name.* 

The Count de Balbi, an illegitimate son of Louis XVIII., who was 
in this country, is said to have been remarkably like Mr. Williams, 
and many persons have recognised the one, from having seeing the 
other. I have accumulated evidence on this point, because, I wish 
to place it historically above the reach of contradiction, and to 
show the remarkable character of the resemblance, bearing the 
test of rigid artistic scrutiny, as well as obvious to every one 
who has an eye for proportions and form. All this gives it an 
importance not due to the generality of resemblances, which are 
partly the work of forgetful n ess, and part of fancy, and disappear 
when subjected to rigid comparison. Were France, and not the 
western wilderness the scene, the wonder would be less. It may 
be easy to find persons with Bourbon physiognomy in Paris, and as 
easy to account for it ; but, by itself, it is & startling phenomenon 
to find, among the Mohawks, a man exhibiting the physiognomical 
traits of the House of Bourbon, and, notwithstanding such a life as 
that of Eleazar Williams, retaining, also, their familiar gestures, and 
not only so, but presenting precisely those modifications of the 

* Several instances of this have fallen under my own observation. The following 
is deserving of preservation : — " As to the personal likeness of Mr. Williams to the 
Bourbon family, we are glad to put on record this fact, that the writer of these Knea 
having heard that likeness spoken of, recognised Mr, Williams long after, when he 
saw ;.im for the first time, simply from the Bourbon cast of his complexion and fea- 
tures, and, without introduction, saluted him by name. We venture the assertion, 
that Mr. Williams would not appear in any room filled with persons acquainted with 
the portraits of the Bourbon fariiily, without that resemblance being at once generally 
recognised.— ^osto?i Dail^ Advertifter, February IT, 1853. 



TOKENS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY. 895 

Bourbon features, which characterized the unfortunate Louis XYII. 
But there was a still closer scrutiny through which it was neces- 
sary Mr. Williams should pass. If; of Indian descent, it was not 
probable that, however his European aspect might deceive the 
unscientific observer, the eyes of professional men would discover 
no trace of Indian blood, Avhen his person was subjected to rigid, 
medical examination. 

There are certain characteristics of the Indian race which are all 
but indellible, and appear, after the lapse of centuries, even on the 
cheek of beauty. When the fact of origin has died into a tradition, 
you can mark the red blood coursing with a duskier hue beneath 
tlie mantling blush brought from other climes, and imparting fixity 
and palor to its softness. Skin, hair, craniological formation in 
the closer degrees of affinity, present ready and infallible tests. 

It was also requisite that the various marks on the body of Mr. 
Williams should be examined and certified. Observing scars on his 
knees, Mr. Williams had supposed them to be scrofulous, and I so 
stated them to be, on his authority. 

On referring to the work of M. De Beauchesne, I found it neces- 
sary, for the identity, that there should be the scars of tumors, 
also, on the wrists and elbows ; and, on examination, found them 
on the arms of Mr. Williams, in the spots indicated, though he 
had not observed them. I then obtained a formal examination 
of his person, by Drs. Francis, Kissam, and Gerondelo, who, after 
consultation, and without knowing Desault's opinion that Louis 
XYII. was not affected with scrofula, came to the conclusion of the 
non-scrofulous character of the scars on the person of Mr. Williams, 
which fact, while otherwise favorably impressed, they considered 
fatal, though, as it turned out, it is exactly confirmatory of the 
identity. I give their certificates below : 

" New York, February 12, 1853. 
'E,Ev. Mr. Hanson: 

" Dear Sir. — We respectfully inclose to you the following statement, as 
the result of an examination made at your request. The physical develop- 
ment of Mr. Eleazar Williams, is that of a robust European, a<^customsd 



396 THE LOST PRINCE. 

to exercise, exposure to the open air. and indicative of the benefit of generous 
diet, and a healthy state of the digestive organs. He might readily be 
pronounced of French blood. His general appearance and bearing ate of a 
superior order : his countenance in repose is calm and benignant : his eyes 
hazel, expressive and brilliant, and his whole contour, when animated, 
indicates a sensitive and impressible organization. His cerebral develop- 
ment is nowise noticeable, and his mental manifestations are in harmony 
therewith. If any peculiarity is predominant, it is his apparent indiffer- 
ence to the pretensions or claims of his advocates. There are no traces of 
the aboriginal or Indian in him. Ethnology gives no countenance to such a 
conclusion. This fact is verified by anatomical examination, and no, 
unsoundness of mind or monomania has been manifested, by any circum- 
stance evinced in communion with him. His age might be estimated as 
approaching seventy years. After a careful examination of the several 
cicatrices which are to be seen in various parts of the surface of his body, 
more especially those discernible about the articulations of the knees, we 
are fully convinced that the joints themselves are in a perfectly normal con- 
dition, and that they have never been affected by scrofula or any deep- 
seated inflammation. The scars, which are more numerous on the right 
than the left leg, are colorless and superficial, indicating an ulcerative 
process of the integuments at an early period of life ; these marks show no 
strumous diathesis, but might equally be the result of early bodily severities 
inflicted by, or consequent upon, a protracted confinement in impure or 
deteriorated air, restricted or bad diet, and other deprivations, or by the 
habits of a wandering and imbecile youth amidst the wilds of nature. The 
remnants of diseased action found on the arms, above the elbows, and about 
the wrists, though less conspicuous, are of a like character. The face, in 
the vicinity of the brows both of the right and left eye, exhibits proofs of 
woimds. These manifestations of injury cannot so easily be traced to a 
definite period of life, inasmuch as they are in some measure masked by 
the eyebrows themselves ; but they partake of the character of incised or 
lacerated wounds. The cicatrix on the superior part of the right side of 
the forehead, being somewhat more than an inch in extent, would appear 
to have originated from a simple incised wound. 

With all consideration, your most obedient friends, 

" John W. Francis, M.B. 

"Richard S. Kissam, M.D." 



TOKENS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY. 397 

^ ,, „ 'New York, J'e^wary 12, 1853. 

•' Eev J. H. Hanson : 

"Rev. and Dear Sir. — You have requested me, as the medical adviser 
of the Eev. Eleazar Williams, to render an account of his personal charac- 
teristics, and the marks of former disease visible on his body. He has a 
lofty aspect, strongly marked outline of figure, obviously European com- 
plexion, and a slight tinge of scrofulous diathesis. His age seems to 
border on seventy— his share of native intellect is above mediocrity, and hia 
mmd, bound in its integrity and pertinent in judgment, is as unaspiring as 
his heart is cordial and afiectionate. The limit of his ambition appears to 
be faitlifully to fulfil his mission as a minister of Christ. The scars I have 
examined are located on both keees, particularly on the right — ^both elbows 
corresponditig in character with those on the lower articulations — and both 
arms, near the wrists, more obscure than the former. They must all have 
occurred in childhood — and, particularly those about the knees and elbows, 
are such as would be left by ulcers, produced by a morbid condition of the 
system, brought on by unwholesome diet, exposure to damp foul air, and 
great depression of mind. They are in no sense scrofulous, but might have 
been accelerated, perhaps slightly aggravated^ by a superficial taint of that 
particular diathesis. With a sincere hope you may succeed in settling the 
question which the most palpable facts have propounded, 

" I remain, very respectfully, yours truly, 

"B. Gerondelo, M.D." 

After the publication of these letters in the April number of Put- 
nam's Magazine, my attention was called, by Mr. A. Fleming, to the 
letter of Madame de Rambaud to the Duchesse D'Angoul^me, in 
which she states that the Dauphin had on his arm inoculation 
marks, of which one was in the shape of a crescent. Upon this, we 
we went together to Mr. Williams, and requested permission to 
examine his arm, when we found precisely the scars indicated. To 
place the fact historically beyond reach of doubt, I requested Dr. 
J. W. Francis to re-examine him. He did so, and made the follow- 
ing addition to the certificate : 

" It deserves to be stated that there are two distinct marks of inoculation 



39S THE LOST PRINCE. 

on the upper part of the left arm, one of which is of a semi-circular or 

crescent shape on the outer margin. 

"John W. Francis, M.D." 

It is but very recently tliat inoculation or vaccination has been 
introduced among the Indians; it was unknown by them in the 
childhood of Mr. Williams ; the scars have every appearance of age ; 
and he has not been inoculated within his memory. That he 
should have the marks of inoculation is, therefore, remarkable — 
that they should coincide in shape with those on the arm of Louis 
XVII., is still more so. In addition, I would call attention to the 
further coincidence of the scar on the eyebrow corresponding with 
a blow given the Prince, by Simon, by which he nearly cut his eye 
out.* 

To the foregoing medical certificates, I now add the following : 

'• PtEV. J. H. Hanson : 

" Dear Sir. — ^You have requested me, as a physician, living in the 
immediate vicinity of the St. Uegis Indians, and in habits of close pro- 
fessional intercourse with them, to state my opinion as to the race of the 
Rev. Eleazar Williams. I beg, therefore, to state, briefly, that, in my opinion, 
he has no ethnological connection with the St. Eegis Indians, nor with any 
other Indians I have ever known, and that my opinion is based on profes- 
sional examination of the persons of the Ptcv. Eleazar Williams, and of seve- 
ral Indians, as well as a minute knowledge of the particular characteristics 
of the Indian race. If Mr. Williams be an Indian, it is in the absence of all 
those ethnological signs discernible in form, feature, texture of the skin, 
hair, and other similar tokens well-known to the profession, which, as far 
as my observation and information extend, are considered decisive. 
" Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

"H. N. Walker, M.D„ 

" Hoganshcrg, New Yor/c^ August 25, 1S53." 

It is, then, I conceive, satisfactorily established, that, while the 
Rev. Eleazar Williams is, infallibly, not of Indian origin, every per- 
sonal token, natural and accidental, necessary to establish identity 

Hu6. 



TOKENS OF PERSONAL IDENTITY. 399 

between him and Louis XVIL, exists ; that he has not only the 
strongest indications of being a member of the Bourbon family, but 
also the known individual peculiarities of the Dauphin, and scars 
upon his body in character, location, and shape, such as would be 
on the body of the unfortunate Prince, if alive. But, for the sake 
of clearness, let me present the subject in a tabular form : — 

Louis XVIL resembled the rest The Eev. E. Williams resem- 

of the Bourbon family in form and bias the Bourbon family in form 

feature, with the exception of the and feature, with the exception of 

absence, in him, of an aquiline the absence, in him, of an aquiline 

nose. He had hazel eyes, tumors nose. He has hazel eyes, the scars 

on both wrists, both elbows, and of tumors or sores in early life on 

both knees, a scar on the eyebrow, both vn-ists, both elbows,, and both 

and inoculation marks on the arm, knees, a scar on the eyebrow, and 

one of which was of a crescent inoculation marks on the arm, one 

ghape. of which is of a crescent shape. 

Remarkable as these coincidences are, I beg to inform that 
class of candid critics, who, when at loss for argument, can ridi- 
cule, without that which gives to ridicule all its force— adherence 
to truth— and, in the absence of v,rhich, it is like the cackle of the 
bird that saved^ the capitol, without its accidental utility, that I 
only attach to them, in my argument, the force of a sine qua non. 
I do not say Mr. Williams, on account of these things, is Louis XYIL, 
but, simply, that he may be. May, however, is a word of Very gra- 
duated significance, and I wish some arithmetician would calculate 
the probabilities of finding in the person of an Iroquois chief, every- 
thing physically necessary to identification with an European 
monarch, natural and accidental. And, if to this calculation he 
would add another, and decipher the further probabilities that, in 
the Indian chief, presenting all the above physical coincidences 
with the king, there should centre all the other tokens of identity, 
derived from circumstantial evidence which this volume contains, I 
should be glad to learn the number of figures composing his arith- 
metic. 



400 THE LOST PRINCE. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE PEINOE DE JOINVILLE AND M. A. DE BEAUCHESNE. 

Immediately on the publication of the February number of 
" Putnam's Magazine," copies of it were sent to the Prince de 
Joinville, by various persons ; and 1 awaited with some curiosity, 
but no apprehension, the response that gentleman would give to 
the appeal made to him. Desiring to ascertain the truth, I had so 
worded my article as to insure a reply of some sort, w^hich I 
thought would materially aid the investigation. Sincerity has its 
own expression, which it is as dijEcult to feign, as it is easy to 
discern. 

I felt convinced if the Prince had been wrongly accused, the' 
fact would appear on the surface of his reply ; and if rightly, he 
must either make a candid acknowledgment, and spare me the 
trouble of further . investigation, or involve himself in some palpa- 
ble contradiction, leading, by a more circuitous route, to an 
equally satisfactory result. It is true, I ran one risk. It was the 
policy of the Prince, if he desired to conceal the truth, to make a 
line of himself, and present the smallest amount of surface to the 
shot of an opponent. Prudence might thus ape the semblance of 
dignity, and hypocrisy adopt the language of sincerity. It was 
possible, therefore, he might reply: — "The Prince de Joinville 
denies having made the disclosures asserted by M. Williams." 

This was all the public required, and had he said, merely, this, it 
would have been almost impossible to bring the charge home to 
him, however true — ridicule would have been cast, by his cool indif- 
ference on the affair — the investigation would, probably, have 
stopped, and if further evidence relative to the interview, came to 
light, room would have been open for explanation adapted to the 
requirements of circumstance. But I was playing a game of chess, 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 401 

in which, acting alike with candor, and boldness, I had to calcu- 
late the probabilities of oversight on the other side. The Bourbon 
family had never exhibited much practical acuteness, to say 
nothing of wisdom ; and indeed, I am afraid, certain critics, when 
at a loss for other arguments, will say, Mr. "Williams has too much 
sense to come of the stock. I did not, therefore, anticipate the 
wisest management. Human nature is the same in prince and 
plebeian, and every one who has not the perverse genius of a 
Talleyrand, which I knew De Joinville had not — if conscience tells 
him he is in a dangerous position — will become nervous and throw 
in unnecessary explanations, defences, and palliatives, which will 
make against him if the case be of sufficient importance to demand 
critical scrutiny. I looked, in case an insincere course was 
adopted, for a reply extra-prudentially long, and I was not mistaken. 
The acknowledgment of the interview, by the Prince, was all 
important, because even this fact was considered apocryphal by 
many. This was natural in England, where distance gives a 
shadowy character to events in America, and I was not astonished 
to read in the "London Morning Chronicle," the following pas- 
sage : — " We are aware that the success of certain fantastic literary 
impostures by the gifted Edgar Poe, may have tempted other 
writers to try their hands at hoaxing the public, and that this 
article may be a specimen of vraisemblable inventions. But, at 
any rate, this would leave it the merit of much ingenuity and 
readableness, while it would be open to condemnation for the 
impertinent use of the names of living persons, amongst others of 
the Prince de Joinville." 

In this country, where characters were capable of being easily 
ascertained, the case was different. But ridicule was thrown on 
the affair, ^Dhile in jrrocess of investigation, and when brought for- 
ward by respectable and responsible names, simply as a historic 
problem, in a manner not creditable to the press of a free country. 
There were many and noble exceptions. But let this pass. 
One article alone I am compelled to notice. A writer in the 



402 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Romisli papers, the " Phare de New York," and the " Freeman's 
Journal," above the initials, " H. D. 0.," which were understood to 
be those of Mr. H. De Courcey, represented me as being instigated 
in the publication, which he entitled, "Un Roman d'imagination," 
while he politely called me the Romancer of Putnam — by hostility 
to the Church of Rome. He further alleged, that three Protestant 
ministers had put their heads together to concoct a drama. I am 
not aware that Protestants, with all their faults, and they are 
legion, ever resorted, for quasi religious purposes, to falsification of 
history and forgery of pretended testimony to injure the Roman 
communion. This would be a work of supererogation. We need 
not resort to fiction when we have a storehouse of facts, endless 
as the meritorial treasury of the saints. Men are very apt to 
suspect others of practices Avhich lie nearer home. AVe shall see 
hereafter. 

The expected reply of the Prince came at length. It was in the 
shape of a letter, addressed, by M. Trognon, his secretary, to the 
London agent of Mr. Putnam, and showed the nature of the 
ground on which lie had determined to take his stand. As this 
document is of the highest importance, I give it both in the origi- 
nal and in a translation. 

Claremont, Surrey^ 9, Fevrier. 1853. 

Monsieur. — Le Prince de Joinville, a re9u le numero du Monthly Maga- 
zine de New York, que voiis avez bien voulu lui transrnettre, et a lu 
1' article sur lequel vous avez appele son attention. Sa premiere pensee 
etait de traiter avec I'lndilfference qu'elle merite, I'absurde invention qui 
fait le fond de cet article : mais en reflechissant qu'un pen de vrai s'y trouve 
mele abeaucoup de faux, le Prince a cru qu'il etait bon que je vous repon- 
disse en son nom quelques lignes destinees a faire, au milieu de cet amas 
de fables, la part exacte de la verite. Vous ferez, monsieur, de cette 
reponse I'usage qui vous paraitra le plus convenable. 

li est tres vfai que, dans un voyage qu'il fit aux Etats Unis vers la fin 
de I'annee 1841, le Prince se trouvant a Mackinac, reucontra Sur le bateau a 
vapour un passager dont il croit reconnaitre la figure dans le portrait donne 
par le Monthly Magazine, mais dont le nom avait entierement fui de sa 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 403 

memoire. Ce passager semblait fort au courant des evenementa qui se 
sont accomplis dans I'Amerique du Nord pendant le siecle dernier. II 
racontait une foule d'anecdotes et de particulavites interessantes sur les 
Pran^ais qui prirent part a ces evenements et s'y distinguerent. Sa mere 
etait, disaitil, une Indienne, appartenant a la grandepeuplade des Iroquois, 
fidele alliee de la Trance; il ajoutait que du cote paternel son origine etait 
Prancaise, et allait jusqu'a citer un noni que le Prince s'abstient de rap- 
porter. C'etait la ce qui I'avait mis en possession de tant de details curieux 
a entendre. Un de ces recits les plus attachants etait celui qu'il fasait des 
derniers moments du Marquis de Montcalm, mort entre les bras d'un Iro- 
quois, son parent, a qui le vaillant capitaine avait laisse son epee. Ces 
details ne purent manquer d'interesser vivement le Prince, dont le voyage a 
Mackinac, a Green Bay, etsur le Haut Mississippi, avait pour objet surtout 
de rechercher la trace glorieuse des Fran9ais, qui les premiers ouvrivent a la 
civilization ces belles contrees. 

Le Prince pria M. Williams (puisque tel etait le nom de son interlocuteur) 
de lui faire parvenir, sous forme de notes, tous les rensiegnments qu'il serait 
en mesure de se procurer, et qui pourraient jeter quelque jour sur I'histoire 
des etabiissements Franijais dans I'Amerique du Nord. De son cote M' 
Williams, qui ne paraissait moins curieux de connaitre a fond cette meme 
hi'stoire, demanda au Prince de lui transmettre tous les documents qui y 
etaient relatifs, et qui devaient se trouver dans les archives du g'ouvernement 
rran9ai3. 

Arrive a Green Bay, le Prince y fut retenu pendant une demi journee par 
le difRculte de se procurer le nombre de clievaux necessaire au voyage qu'il 
allait entreprendre, M. Williams le presser vivement de I'accompagner dans 
un settlement d'Indiens Iroquois etablis pres de Green Bay, chez qui disait 
il se conservait encore le souvenir de leurs Peres d' Orient, et qui accueille- 
raient avec bonheur le fils du Grand Chef de la France. Le Prince declina 
cette oflVe, et poursuivit son voyage. 

Depuis lors, quelques lettres out ete echangees entre M. Williams et les 
personnes attachees au Prince, au sujet des documents dont il vient d'etre 
question. Ainsi la lettre de M. Touchard citee dans I'article du Monthly 
Magazine doit etre authentique. M. Williams aurait pu egalement en pro- 
duire une que je me souvienne do lui avoir ecrite pour le meme objet. 

Mais la finit ce que I'article contient de vrai sur les relations du Prince 



404 THE LOST PRINCE. 

avec M. Williams. Tout le reste, tout ce que a trait a la revelation que le 
Prince aurait faite a M. Williams, du mystere de sa naissance, tout ce qui 
concerne le pretendvi personage de Louis XVII. est d'une bout a 1' autre une 
oeuvre d'imagination, une fable grossierements tissue, une speculation sur la 
credulite publique faite on ne sait a quel propos et dans quel but. Si par 
hazard, quelques uns des lecteurs du Monthly Magazine etaient disposes a y 
avouer oreance il faudrait les engager a faire venir de Paris im livre qui vient 
d'y etre tout recemment public par M. de Beauchesne ils y trouveraient, sur 
la vie et la mort de I'infortune Dauphin, du vrai Louis XYII. les details les 
plus circonstancies et les plus positifs. II me reste a vous repeter, Mon- 
sieur, que vous pouvez faire que vous jujerez conv enable, olfrir en meme 
temps, 1' assurance de ma consideration distingue. 

Aug. Trognon, ancien precepteur 
et secretaire des commandements du Prince de Joinville. 

" Claremont, Surrey, February 9, 1853. 

" Sir. — The Prince de Joinville, has received the number of the Monthly 
Magazine, of New York, which you have kindly thought fit to transmit 
to him, and has read the article to which you have called his attention. 
His first thought was, to treat with the indifference which it deserves, the 
absurd invention on which this article is founded — but on reflecting that a 
little truth is there mixed with much falsehood, the Prince has deemed it 
right that I should, in his name, give a few lines in reply, to show the 
exact portion of truth there is in this mass of fables. 

" You can make, sir, of this reply, the use which you think proper. 

" It is very true, that in a voyage which he made to the United States, 
towards the end of the year 1841, the Prince, finding himself at Mackinac, 
met on board the steamboat, a passenger whose face he thinks he recog- 
nises in the portrait given in the Monthly Magazine, but whose name 
had entirely escaped his memory. 

" This passenger seemed well-informed concerning the history of North 
America during the last century. He related many anecdotes, and inte- 
resting particulars concerning the French who took part, and distinguished 
themselves in these events. His mother, he said, was an Indian woman, 
of the great tribe of the Iroquois, faithful allies of Prance. He added, that 
on his father's side, his origin was French, and went so far as to cite 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 405 

a name which the Prince abstains from repeating. It was by this means 
that he had come in possession of so many details curious to hear. One 
of the most interesting of these recitals was that which he gave of the last 
moments of the Marquis of Montcalm, who died in the arras of an Iroquois, 
who was his relative, and to whom the great captain had left his sword. 
These details could not fail vividly to interest the Prince, whose voyage to 
Mackinac, Green Bay, and the Upper Mississippi, had for its object 
to retrace the glorious path of the French, who had first opened to civiliza- 
tion these fine countries. The Prince asked Mr. Williams, since such was 
the name of his interlocutor, to send to him in the form of notes, all the 
information which he could procure, and which could throw light upon the 
history of the French establishments in North America. On his side Mr. 
Williams, who did not appear less curious to understand thoroughly 
this same history, asked the Prince to transmit to him all the documents 
which related to it, and which could be found in the archives of the French 
government. 

" On his arrival at Green Bay, the Prince was detained during half a 
day, by the difficulty of procuring the number of horses necessary for the 
journey, which he was about to imdertake. Mr. Williams pressed him 
earnestly to accompany him to a settlement of Iroquois Indians, estab- 
lished near Green Bay, among whom, he said, were still many who 
remembered their Eastern fathers, and who would receive with delight, the 
son of the Great Chief of France. The Prince declined this ofi"er, and pur- 
sued his journey. 

" Since then, some letters have been exchanged between Mr. Williams 
and the persons attached to the Prince, on the subject of the documents in 
question. Thus the letter of M. Touchard, cited in the article of the 
Monthly Magazine, must be authentic. Mr. Williams could also equally 
have produced one which I remember to have written to him upon the 
same subject. 

"But, there ends all which the article contains of truth, concerning the 
relations of the Prince with Mr. Williams. All the rest, all which treats 
of the revelation which the Prince made to Mr. Williams, of the mystery 
of his birth, all which concerns the pretended personage of Louis XVII., is 
from one end to the other a work of the imagination, a fable woven whole- 
sale, a speculation upon the public credulity. If, by chance, any of 



406 THE LOST PRINCE. 

the readers of the Monthly Magazine should be disposed to avow belief in 
it. they should procure from Paris a book which has been very recently 
published by M. Beauchesne. They will there find, concerning the life and 
death of the unfortunate Dauphin, the most circumstantial and positive 
details. It remains for me to repeat to you, sir, that you can make of this 
letter such use as you may judge proper, and to ofier to you, at the same 
time, the assurance of my distinguished consideration. 

" Signed, Aug. Trognon. 

Former preceptor, and secretary for the commands 
of the Prince de Joinville." 

After re-examining this document carefully, with the advantage 
of having before me a letter from the Prince himself, addressed to 
a gentleman in this country, in which he goes over, almost verbally, 
the course travelled by his secretary, showing that the words of the 
latter are the production of De Joinville's mind, I can arrive at no 
other conclusion than that expressed in Putnam's Magazine, in 
which I do not find a word to alter, and therefore insert it in a 
note ;* v/liile, in confirmation of the view then taken, I will again 

* The Prince de Joinville represents himself, not only forgetful of the name of Mr. 
Williams, but ascribes to chance Ms oneeting with him " Finding himself at Macki- 
nac, he met on a steamer a passenger." The suppressio veri is the euggestio falsi. 
And from the ground which he has taken, I cannot permit him to move. The Prince 
deJoiivcille, it can easily 1)6 proved, sought the interview with 3Ir. Williams. There 
was no accident in the meeting. He was rather young at the time as a diplomatist, 
and permitted the world to know too much of his errand. The following testimony, 
from respectable American gentlemen, is decisive : — 

The editors of the Buffalo Courier and of the Northern Light show that, long before 
the Prince got into the neighborhood of Mackinac, he was inquiring about Mr, Wil- 
liams. Capt. Shook confirms entirely all the statements of Mr. Williams in which he is 
concerned. It is then a fact that not once, but several times, during the journey from 
New York to Green Bay, he had inquired of a variety of persons concerning Mr. Wil- 
liams, and that, when he saw him, he showed surprise and agitation, and paid him 
such unusual attention, that it is remembered vividly by eye-witnesses, after a lapse 
of twelve years. 

And yet the Prince, who knew his name so well before he ever saw him, and whose 
memory is so very faithful concerning everything which he thinks will make against 
him, now declares that the meeting- was icoidental, ^nd that, his name has escaped 



DE JOINYILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 407 

briefly consider the Prince's letter, in connection with the testi- 
mony of other gentlemen, in order to answer objections made to 
my position, 

When the Prince read my article he was evidently at a loss what 
to do. " Say nothing," whispered prudelice. "It is only a maga- 
zine article — stand on yom- dignity — call it, if questioned, an absurd 

his memory. But, in many respects, his statements are important. The Prince says 
he acknowledged himself the son of an Indian woman. This shows how erroneous are 
the misrepresentations in many circles, which have charged him with having had a 
monomania of twenty years' standing, that he was the Dauphin, and confirms, by the 
authority of the Prince, the statement of Mr. Williams, that up to this time he con- 
sidered himself of Indian parentage. As to his being of French extraction on the 
father's side, Mr. Williams never could have said that, unless he intended, to accuse 
his supposed mother of infidelity, which it is not likely he would have done to a 
stranger. The Williams family are of English origin. There was a surmise that his 
mother had French blood in her veins, but it was some generations back. Again : 
The nature of a great part of the conversation between Mr. Williams and the Prince, 
on the steamer, is, in substance, confirmed; and thus all which Mr. Williams has 
stated is authenticated, on one hand or the other, except what occurred in the private 
interview. Here no one but themselves and God are witnesses. But, inasmuch as 
the letter fi"om the Prince proves him not to be trustworthy in matters open and evi- 
dent, there is no reason why we should give him credence in those which are secret. 
The reference to Beauchesne is unfortunate, and proves, to my mind, that there was 
a special necessity for the publication of such a work. It is curious that the very 
copy which I have reviewed, was left, by some person unknown, in the room of Mr. 
Williams, at Washington, with an .^.nonymous note, begging his acceptance of it, 
" though the perusal might give him pain." 

Let any one trace on a map the route of the Prince, and ask himself whether his- 
torical researches would be likely to take any man to a place like Green Bay, lying 
off the direct line of travel, leading nowhere, and having in its neighborhood no 
important memorials of the French. His natural course when at Mackinac, would 
have been either to go through the Saut Ste. Marie, to Lake Superior, the shores of 
which are ci-owded with mementoes of his countrymen, or to follow the track of La 
Salle and Hennepin down Lake Michigan to Chicago. Green Bay is a small town in 
the wilderness, having a palisade fort, and surrounded by a few Indian settlements. 
There is no histoi-ical attraction about it, and the Prince confesses as much by saying 
that a delay in procuring horses was the sole cause of his staying there even half a 
day, and declining an opportunity of meeting the neighboring Indians. It is true 
that Marquette was at Green Bay, but if the Prince had desired to follow his footsteps, 
he should have pursued the Fox River westerly, and not gone directly south to Galena. 



408 THE LOST PRINCE. 

invention, and there let it end.'' " Nay, but there is truth in it," 
suggested conscience, " and silence "will be accounted equivalent to 
confession. I must say something." And then came the rub- 
puzzling as the horns of Hamlet's dilemma — " What shall I say ?" 

On the sixth of the next month he was at St. Louis, so that his historical researches 
on the Upper Mississippi could not have been very laborious or profound. 

Again, the whole of his account is made to tally with the fundamental misrepresen- 
tation that the meeting with Mr. Williams was accidental. Now we know that it was 
not accidental ; that it is an established fact that he went to Green Bay to see him, 
that he repeatedly and earnestly inquired after him, and can have no reasonable 
doubt that had Mr. Williams resided in any other place than Green Bay, he would 
equally have sought him out. But the accounf of the Prince contains nothing to 
meet the requirements of that fact. That fact demands that De Joinville should have 
had some object in seeking an interview with Mr. Williams. It is impossible to evade 
this. Now, no such object is apparent in the Prince's statement ; nay, is studiously 
kept out of sight ; and, though he solemnly declares that he states the whole truth, 
yet it is undeniable that he omits the most important portion of the history of the 
interview — and not only omits it, but precludes himself by the coloring which he has 
put on the transaction, from framing any substitute for the simple truth hereafter. 
But from Mr. Williams we learn why the Prince so particularly inquired after him, 
and so earnestly sought him out ; and I assert and will maintain it, that herein he is 
entitled to the benefit of all the probabilities, physical, historical, and circumstantial, 
which tend to confirm the truth of his account. In other words, if there were no 
such evidence to sustain him, his cause would be by so much the weaker ; but every 
iota of testimony which makes it probable that he is the Dauphin, increases the pro- 
bability that he tells the truth concerning the facts of his interview with De Join- 
ville ; and yet some will say, the Prince denies the revelation asserted, and therefore 
Mr. Williams spoke untruly. I say there is no therefore about it, and defy any one to 
prove that there is. Why should there be ? Because De Joinville is a prince— the 
descendant of the Regent Orleans, and of Philip Egalite ? The opinion of the New 
York Baily Times is far more sensible ,' it predicted the course which the Prince 
would take, and the reasons which would actuate him. " If the story be true," it 
says, " neither the Bourbon nor the Orleans family have any justification before the 
world for the cruelty of suppressing the truth, always well known to them, for more 
than half a century, in order to enjoy the inheritance of the legitimate, but^ exiled 
king. They will be considered as usurpers, not of the property of a stranger, or of an 
enemy, but of one of their own household ; one whose misfortunes, if not his right 
entitled him to consideration. It will prove to have been a conspiracy of 
against one of its members ; a royal conspiracy to defraud. And it is scarcely likely 
that De Joinville will readily corroborate a tale which must sentence the Bourbons 
of either branch to infamy." 



right^ 
a VAcm 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 409 

"Confess what you can't avoid," said the spirit of Machiavelli, 
*' and call it the exact truth." Unfortunately, the execution of this 
project was left to the intellect of De Joinville, and the pen of M. 
Trognon. 

To form a judgment of the Prince's letter, the reader must have 
the following testimony before him : 



LETTEE FKOM CAPTAIN SHOOK. 

" Huron, February 9, 1853. 
" To THE Rev. J. H. Hanson : 

'•Rev. and Dear Sir. — Yours of the 4th inst., together with the Feb- 
ruary number of ' Putnam's Monthly,' came duly to hand. It gives me 
great pleasure to communicate anything, and all I know, of what took 
place between the Prince de Joinville and the Rev. Eleazar Williams, upon 
the steamer Columbus, firom Mackinac to Green Bay. I have carefully 
read your article in the Monthly, and so far as matters relating to me go, 
the Rev. gentleman has stated things truly. I have a very vivid and dis- 
tinct recollection of the introduction of the Prince to the Rev. Mr. Williams, 
and of the apparent surprise manifested by the Prince on the occasion ; 
and, furthermore, could not but wonder myself, why he should pay to the 
humble and impretending Indian missionary such pointed and polite atten- 
tion. I have long known the Rev. Mr. Williams, and seen much of him 
in our voyages up and down the Lakes, and have always found him an 
amiable, upright, and gentlemanly man, and to be relied upon in any state- 
ment he may make. I would again repeat, that what he has stated in 
relation to me is literally true. If I have not met your mind in this reply, 
please to write again, and put the matter to me in the form of questions. 
You say, ' I believe that the Prince gave to you a gold snuff-box upon the 
occasion.' He did, and I prize it highly. 

"If you need an affidavit on the subject, I am willing and ready to 
give it. 

" With sentiments of high regard I am yours, 

" Jo-HN Shook." 
18 



410 THE LOST rillNCE. 

The foUowiDg is an extract from a letter of Mr. George S. Ray- 
mond — editor of the " JS^orthern Light," Hallo well, Maine — dated 
March 1, 1853, and addressed to Mr. Putnam : 

" I am acquainted with many of the circumstances connected with the 
Prince de Joinville's visit to Green Bay, his meeting with Mr. WilUams, 
&c., having heen myself a fellow-passenger with the Prince during the 
whole of his Lake tour. At that time I was an officer in the Brazilian 
service, and came home to the United States to visit a brother, then a resi- 
dent at Fort Howard, near Green Bay. I joined the Joinville party in New 
York, travelled with it to Green Bay, and, during several conversations 
with the Prince, heard him express a most particular anxiety to find out 
tills Mr. Williams, and have an interview with him." 

The testimony of Mr. James O. Brayman, one of the Editors of 
the " Buffalo Courier." In an editorial he made the following state- 
ment : 

" We remember the time of the visit of the Prince de Joinville well, 
having passed from Cleveland to Detroit on the same steamboat with him. 
He, in public conversation, spoke of the general object of his visit, and 
made inquiries in relation to the whereabouts of Mr. Williams. We recol- 
lect listening to a conversation between him and a Mr. Beaubien, of De- 
troit, in which the latter stated that it was understood that Mr. Williams 
xoas of Indian blood. The Prince, however, did not commit himself upon 
any point in regard to the specific purpose for which he sought Mr. Wil- 
liams, but confined himself to generalities." 

On seeing this, I addressed a letter of inquiry to the editors, and 
received, from Mr. Brayman, the following reply, dated, Buffalo, 
March 4, 1853 : 

" In the fall of 1841, I took steamboat at Cleveland for Detroit. The 
Prince de Joinville and company were on board, having come up from 
Bufialo. There were also several gentlemen of French descent from De- 
troit, aboard. In the evening, while sitting in the cabin, the Prince con- 
versed freely — part of the time in French, and part in English. While con- 
versing with the late Col. Beaubien, he made the inquiries concerning Mr 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 411 

Williams, and spoke of his intention of visiting him at Green Eay. Col. 
B., who had, I believe, been an Indian trader, knew Mr. W. well, personally 
or by reputation; and replied to the Prince as to his whereabout and his 
occupation. The Prince inqtdred as to his personal bearings and asked 
various general questions concerning him, and had the appearance of con- 
siderable earnestness in his inquiries. The conversation continued some 
minutes, and concluded by the Prince remarking, ' I shall see him before I 
return.' This matter has slept in ray memory, and having been called up 
by the late discussions, is not very distinct as to particulars ; the general 
features, however, are as fresh in my mind as an occurrence of yesterday. 
I have a relative who was some years a teacher in the Indian Mission 
School at Green Bay. I have heard her relate the circumstance of the 
visit of the Prince de Joinville to Mr. Williams as something involving 
much of mystery, and that it, for a while, produced a marked and observ- 
able change in Mr. W.'s conduct. He appeared abstracted at times, and 
excited as by some great emotion. She remarked that the Prince treated 
him with more than ordinary deference and consideration, for which she 
could not account at the time." 

In a subsequent editorial, Mr. Brajman added : 

" In regard to the matters that came under our own cognizance, in the 
fall of 1841, we derived no further impression from the conversation of the 
Prince de Joinville, which was public, than that the person for whom he 
inquired had been recommended to him as one who, from his familiarity 
with the west, was qualified to aid him in researches which he was prose- 
cuting. Since the question of the Dauphin age has been raised, it is easy 
to connect the inquiries with it, although such a connection may never 
have entered the mind of the Prince." 

Now let us lay out the facts before us for examination. 

1. At the time of writing, the Prince had the narrative and 
journal of the Eev. Eleazar Williams before him. The letter of 
his secretary is a thoughtful and well considered reply to the state- 
ments contained therein — in proof of which the Prince has 
himself repeated almost verbally what M. Trognon has said. He 



412 THE LOST PRIifCE. 

takes, then, his ground deliberately, and no one else has the right 
or power to change it for him, or to suggest modes of defence or 
explanation which he has not himself seen fit to adopt. 

What then, let me ask, is the ground occupied by the Prince ? 
Let him answer for himself. " Reflecting that a little truth is there 
mixed with much falsehood, the Prince has deemed right that I 
should, in his name, give a few lines in reply to show the exact 
'portion of truth there is in this mass of fables " — and, lest there 
should be any mistake, M. Trognon adds, in conclusion, after 
having given the Prince's explanation in full, "There ends all 
which the article contains of truth." 

Now, be it remembered, Mr. Williams had stated that the Prince 
had made inquiries for him almost from the time of arriving in 
this country, and had continued them up to the period of their 
meeting at Mackinac. And since, whatever does not fall within the 
scope of the Prince's admissions, is purposely excluded as false, it 
follows that this particular statement of Mr. Williams, must be 
ranked among them, and that the secretary's declaration is 
emphatic when he says, "It is very true, that in a voyage which 
he made towards the end of the year 1841, the Prince finding him- 
self at Mackinac, met on board the steamboat a passenger whose 
face he thinks he recognises, but whose name has entirely escaped 
his memory." The design was evidently, to represent this meeting 
as the heginning of his acquaintance not only with \\\q person but 
the existence of the man, and to discard a^ fabulous all pretences of 
having Tcnown Ms name^ expressed an interest in him, sought him, 
followed him. The language of the letter .bears the expression of 
accident upon its face ; but, in the connexion in which it stands, 
accident is its essence. There is not the remotest hint given of 
anything lying back of the casual rencontre at Mackinac, and the 
secretary states the " exact" truth. 

If, now, from the nature of the meeting, thus precisely stated by 
M. Trognon, we pass on to that of the conversation which arose 
between them, we find the same feature of accident. As fellow 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 413 

passengers on a steamboat, they began conversing, Mr. Williams 
related a crowd of anecdotes — told the Prince all about his family 
— the Prince got interested — asked him to put down in writing 
some details concerning the death of Montcalm ; and promised in 
return to send him some historical documents; parted from him, 
and pursued his journey. Now, this is 6^?^ which human ingenuity 
can make out of M. Trognon's letter. Beyond this must be " une 
oeuvre d'imagination." "Whoever attempts to make more of it, 
must supply it from another source, in direct contradiction to the 
repeated assurance that here is the " exact " truth and " all " the 
truth. You cannot by any process known to criticism, by any law 
or mode of interpretation, wring from the guarded and measured 
sentences anything which indicates or permits previous knowledge 
or set purpose. This construction of the letter is further required 
by the manner in which M. Trognon speaks of their detention at 
Green Bay, at which place they did not pause to visit unexistent 
historical sites, or inquire for information, but to get horses. I 
affirm, then, that the Prince does represent this meeting as acci- 
dental and unsought. 

2. Now, then, compare with this, certain indubitable facts. Mr. 
Eaymond, whose testimony was given unsolicited, accompanied the 
party of the Prince de Joinville, all the way from New York to 
Green Bay, conversed with the Prince, and heard him " express a 
most particular anxiety to -find out this Mr. Williams., and have an 
interview with him.'''' I have seen another letter of Mr. Raymond's, 
in which he stated that these inquiries began almost from the time 
of leaving New York. 

Captain Shook, also, heard the Prince make rei^eated inquiries for 
Mr. Williams, was employed by him to obtain a formal interview, 
introduced the gentlemen to each other, has " a most vivid and 
distinct recollection of the apparent surprise manifested by the 
Prince, on the occasion, and could not but wonder why he should 
pay to the humble missionary such pointed and polite attention" — 
attention not resolvable into common French politeness, because 



\ 



414 THE LOST PRINCE. 

paid to no one else with whom the Prince conversed, but some- 
thing marked and peculiar in its deference. 

We now come to the testimony of Mr. Brayman, from a portion 
of which a meaning has been attempted to be wrested, which it 
cannot bear. A distinction must always be made between the 
focts stated by a witness, and his impressions concerning those 
facts. Once confound these, and you may shut up your courts of 
justice. 

The facts stated by Mr. Brayman are these ; that the Prince 
made inquiries concerning — 1. The whereabouts. 2. The occupa- 
tion. 3. The personal bearing of Mr. "Williams, and that, besides, 
he asked various general questions concerning him, and had the 
appearance of considerable earnestness ; that he remarked, " I shall 
see him before I return;" that Colonel Beaubien stated (doubtless, 
in reply to some questions of the Prince, as to his race), that it was 
understood Mr. Williams was of Indian blood, that the Prince did 
not commit himself upon any pointy in respect to the specific purpose 
for which he sought Mr. Williams, and, consequently, did not say 
he wished to obtain aid from him in his historic investigations. 

The impressions of Mr. Brayman, at the time, were natural 
enough, he heard the Prince speaking of the general objects of his 
mission, and inferred from thence that his inquiries respecting Mr. 
Williams, had some relation to his ostensible purpose, in going 
west, but it was only an inference, and one, too, which, however, 
superficially plausible, at the moment, would not, even then, have 
borne the test of comparison with the facts, for, if the Prince's 
design had been only what Mr. B. imagined, why be so earnest and 
particular about personal 'bearing^ race^ occiqxitionl In all these 
repeated questionings of various persons, and in many places — ques- 
tionings which would not be satisfied with an answer — there is 
clearly traceable the straining forAvard of the mind, towards an 
object which it was impatient to reach, and concerning which there 
was excited an insatiable curiosity. 

Now, let any candid mind bring in juxta position, M. Trognon's 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 415 

letter, on the one hand, with its accidental meeting, and the state- 
ments of eye witnesses, as to what preceded, and what happened at 
that meeting, and there can be but one sound opinion, that the 
Prince is guilty of deliberate falsification. 

But, look further at the internal evidence the letter bears against 
itself. The " name" of Mr. Williams *' had entirely escaped his 
memory," says M. Trognon, and, in a subsequent place, not without 
affectation, he adds, " the Prince asked Mr. Williams, since such 
was the name of his interlocutor." 

The memories of princes may be more treacherous than those of 
ordinary men ; but that of the Prince de Joinville has something in 
it peculiar, an eclectic obliviousness truly extraordinary. He remem- 
bered a great deal about Mr. Williams, his appearance, his anecdotes, 
and many little circumstances connected with the interview, but 
entirely forgot his name. Now, let us see whether this was. at all 
probable, or I may say possible. It is entirely in keeping with 
the theory of an accidental meeting, but how does it tally with the 
contrary, and with other facts ? 

There v^as an understanding between the gentlemen, at parting, 
that they should mutually interchange civilities, and Mr. Williams, a 
few days after, sent the Prince some historical memoranda, consist- 
ing, for the most part, of extracts from Hennepin and Charlevoix, 
which the Prince could have obtained without going to Green Bay 
for them, and in a brief accompanying note, he said he should be 
happy to transmit any similar information, adding, as a reason, " I 
am desirous to sustain the honor of the French name, in these ends 
of the earth." E"ow, what possible motive an American Indian 
should have to sustain the honor of the French name, I cannot 
understand. Explain this passage, by the facts related in the jour- 
nal of Mr. Williams, and the whole is consistent. He received, in 
reply, the following letter from M. Touchard. 

" Aide de Camp de Service, . 

" Aupres de Msr. le Prince de Joinville, } 

'• Frigate la Belle Foule a Neic York, 
"21 9bre (Novembre), 1841. 
" Monsieur. — Je me suis empresse de mettre sous leg yeux de Monseigneur 



416 THE LOST PRINCE. 

le Prince de Joinville, voire lettre datee du 25 8bre, avec les notes qui 
I'accompagnaient sur les premiers etablissements !Fran9ais au bord des 
grand lacs. 

"Son Altesse Royale me charge de vous remercier en son nom de votre 
obligeant et de votre aimable empressement. II lira ces notes avec tout 
I'interet qui s'attache a vos recherches historiques, faites sur le theatre 
meme ou nos Fran9ais ont laisse tant et d'honorable souvenirs. 

" Je suis heureux, Monsieur, d' avoir a vous transmettre les remercimens de 
son Altesse Royale. Si jamais vous venez visiter notre France veuillez 
vous souvenir que S. A. R. vous reverrait avec plaisir. 

" Recevez, Monsieur, toutes les assurances de mon consideration la plus 
distinguee, 

" Lieut, de Vaisseau V. Tor chard." 

The hint here given, concerning the possibility of Mr. Williams 
visiting France, deserves notice. Some may explain it on the 
ground of compliment, but if so, it was empty to the Yerge of insult, 
as there was little probability that the poor Indian missionary 
would ever think of going as a guest to the French court, and 
nothing, certainly, had happened, according to the statement of the 
Prince, at the brief accidental interviev/, likely to turn his tlioughts 
to Versailles and the Tuileries. But, taking Mr. Wilhams's version 
of the affair, and the invitation of the Prince, though couched in 
the phrase of ordinary civility has a meaning. The Prince, if he 
made such disclosures as Mr. Williams asserts, could scarcely 
think the latter would allow the matter to rest where it did, and 
he would seem here to intimate that the door of negotiation was still 
open. 

After his return to France, the Prince, in accordance with his 
promise, sent Mr. Williams various books and documents. 

In the spring of 1843, Mr. Williams was requested by an Iroquois 
chief, in the neighborhood of Green Bay, to forward to Louis 
Philippe, through the Prince de Joinville, a petition^ which, as an 
act of neighborly kindness, he did, although the chief belonged to 
the Koman communion. In writing to the Prince, on the occasion, 
lie alluded courteously to their interview. In this letter, it ia 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 41 7 

remarkable that he speaTcs of himself to De Joinville, as a French- 
man, which would have been perfectly absurd in one who had 
confessed to the Prince he was an Indian, and had learned nothing 
to change his opinion. "To travel over the western lakes and 
country, as you did, which were formerly traversed ly the enter- 
prising spirits of our forefathers, whose names are celebrated in 
America to this day, must have been highly gratifiying." Explain 
this allusion, also, by the journal of Mr. Williams, and all is con- 
sistent. M. Trognou, by the command of the Prince, replied to 
Mr. Williams in the following terms : — 

•• Tuileries, Oct. 14, 1843. 
" Secretariat des Commandementa 
" de S. A. R. Mgr. le Prince de Joinville. 

" Sir .'—His K,oyal Highness the Prince de Joinville, who was abroad 
when you wrote to him, on the 31st March, has just now ordered me to 
answer you, that he has received with the greatest pleasure your letter, so 
full of a friendly remembrance. Receive then the hearty thanks of his 
Royal Highness, though expressed by rae, so little acquainted as I am 
with the English language. According to your desire, the Prince has pre- 
sented the petition enclosed in your letter to his father, the King of the 
French, and earnestly recommended it to the benevolence of his majesty. 
The good chief of the Iroquois and his people will be certainly satisfied to 
hear that our king, desirous to gratify their wishes, sends them a set of 
French books, the best appropriated to spread among them the religious 
principles of the Roman Catholic Church. These books, sir, I am ordered 
to send you, that they may be transmitted by your care to John Randa- 
rontye. 

" I hope, when they are arrived at Green Bay, you will honor rae, sir, 
with your answer, and meanwhile, I pray you to believe me, 
" Your very humble and obt. sert., 
" Aug, Trognon, Secretary for 

" The commands of His Royal Highness, 
" The Prince de Joinville." 

From this letter, it appears, that De Joinville had the oppor* 



418 THE LOST PRINCE. 

tnnity to refresh his meraory, fully in regard to the name of Mr. 
Williams, spoke to his father respecting hira, presented the petition, 
5ind had the whole circumstances of their interview recalled, in a 
manner which could not fail to imprint them with the name of Mr. 
Williams on any memory of ordinary tenacity. The books were 
sent, and accompanying them was a letter from Louis Philippe to 
Mr. Williams. This letter has unfortunately been destroyed, and 
its contents can only be collected from the statement of Mr. 
Williams, who says that, the king thanked him for the civilities he 
had shown to his son dui-ing his visit to the United States. The 
fact of the former existence of the letter is proved from the 
accompanying note from M. de La Forest, the French consul in 
New York. 

" The Consul General of France, owing to the interruption of the com- 
munication between New York and Wisconsin Territory, was unable before 
to present to Mr. Eleazar Williams the enclosed letter, and the box of 
books sent by the King of the French. Mr. Williams will oblige M. de 
ia Forest, by acknowledging reception of the whole, and accept his respect- 
ful comjjts. 

" I^eio York, lUh AprU, 1S44." 

Now, one would think that after having Mr. Williams's name on 
his lips all the way from New York to Green Bay, and making such 
repeated and particular inquiries about him ; after all that is known 
to have transpired between them, and after the means for refresh- 
ing his memory which correspondence for years after afforded, the 
Prince would, at least, have remembered his name — but no it had 
" entierement fui de sa meraoire," a thing, I repeat, consistent 
with a perfectly accidental meeting, but not harmonizing at all 
with facts which are incontrovertible. M. Trognon remembered 
him very w^ell, and he certainly had not so much cause to do so as 
the Prince. 

Taking all these facts together, the pretence of forgetfulness 
seems to be as untrue as the pretence of accident. The Prince 
could not have forgotten the name of Eleazar Williams. He 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 419 

Started and trembled when he saw hira. He -recognized, in every 
lineament of his features, in every gesture of his hand, in every 
proportion of his form, the tokens of his race. Those who saw 
them meet, can swear to his agitation. But this, also, according 
to his statement, must be excluded from the exact truth. How 
would he wish the world to account for a fact which, though he 
may deny it, is proved. Again, a Avell-known gentleman, of the 
highest respectability in this country, Mr. George Sumner, brother 
to Mr. Charles Sumner, United States Senator from Massachusetts, 
met, in the year 1846, at Brest, one of the officers who accompa- 
nied the Prince to Green Bay, and, in the cabin of his vessel, 
looking cautiously round before he spoke, he said to Mr. Sumner, 
that there icas something very singular in the American trip of the 
Prince^ icho went out of his icay to meet an old man among the 
Indians^ who had very much of a Bourbon aspect^ and who was 
spohen of as the son of Louis XVI. Are we to exclude this also 
from the exact truth ? Mr. Williams, at the time of the meeting 
with the Prince, at Mackinac, considered himself the son of an 
Indian woman. He could not, therefore, have spoken of himself 
as the son of Louis XVI. There was no such report concerning 
him current, to the knowledge of his most intimate friends, and the 
story must therefore have originated in the party of the Prince. 
This fact not only shows which way the thoughts of the Prince 
were tending, but establishes clearly that the meeting was not 
accidental, and that he went out of his way to see Mr. Williams, 
and thus confirms the statement of the latter, while it throws addi- 
tional discredit on the account given by M. Trognon. 

The whole subject, then, narrows itself to a single, simple, but 
stern issue — that of veracity between the only two witnesses who 
can testify concerning a contested fact. Dismiss from the mind the 
comparative rank of these two individuals : look at them merely as 
men. An interview has taken place between them. One asserts 
that it was purely accidental and unsought^ and gave rise to no 



420 THE LOST PRINCE. 

secret communication of a startling fact, and his account of the 
interview is made to correspond with the hypothesis of a purely 
accidental meeting. The other person affirms that the interview 
was not accidental^ but was sought by the first individual, who 
communicated to him a startling fact^ up to that moment unknown 
to him. Which shall we believe ? The rule of law is, falsum in 
uno, falsum in omnibus. The first asserts an accidental meeting, 
and an unimportant conversation, its necessary consequence. The 
accidental meeting is positively disproved. The foundation goes and 
the superstructure goes with it. A sought interview requires a spe- 
cific ohject. The second person, who has a fair character, and in 
whose story no misrepresentation can be proved, relates 2i,fact com- 
municated at the interview, adequate to explain the proved solici- 
tude of the first person in seeTcing him, but which communication 
that person has the highest earthly interest in denying. If you 
believe the first, you must do so in the face of a falsehood and an 
unexplained fact. If you believe the second, the fact is explained, 
and no falsehood on his part can he shown. I leave the world to 
decide on which side probability inclines. 

In defending, before the American people, the assailed reputation 
of an American citizen, I need scarcely ask whether, in this question 
of veracity, they will believe a person, who, out of his own mouth, 
stands convicted of the most glaring inconsistencies and misstate- 
ments, or one for whose truth there are so many vouchers, and who, 
as a minister of the Gospel, has labored, all his life, to do good to the 
most down-trodden and unbefriended denizens of this continent ; 
and, I can scarcely doubt, that, should the subject of this volume 
attract attention to it in the country under whose flag I was born, 
the generous spirit of Englishmen will not allow mere nominal rank 
to outweigh the asseverations of manly worth. 

Not content with charging Mr. Williams with falsehood, in the 
same breath that he furnished data to convict himself of the crime, 
the Prince, evidently afraid the world would not believe him, 
must bolster up his assertions with the corpulent volumes of M. de 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE BEAUCHESNE. 421 

Beauchesne. This very undignified proceeding, so entirely alien to 
the habits of men in his position, who generally affect to think their 
own word sufficient to ensure public credence, goes far in itself to 
discredit his assertions. Just imagine Prince Albert accused by 
some person in the wilds of Africa, of having made certain state- 
ments affecting his personal honor, writing a long, disingenuous, 
explanatory letter, and concluding by saying, " If the world won't 
believe me, I refer them to Mr. Macaulay's History." I beg the 
pardon of his royal highness for the supposition, but it illustrates 
the position of Ferdinand D'Orleans. Beauchesne, Beauchesne — 
t^ere is the infallible specific, let everybody read Beauchesne. He 
will anathematize his own soul to convince them, and show them 
his album. It is of no avail — those lying volumes will never go 
down to posterity as history. But, those curious in the weakness 
and wickedness of deception, may deposit them on the same shelf 
with the memoirs of Naundorff, the Latin epitaph to the memory 
and ashes of Louis XVII., the letter of M. Trognon, and the forged 
aflidavit of the Rev. M. Marcoux, of St. Regis, of which I shall 
shortly speak. If all were bound together, they would form what 
M. H. de Oourcey calls " un Roman d'imagination."* 

* The following items of unconnected information I here insert in a note, as they 
may at some time be of service. 

I am informed by the Rev. Mr. Van Rensselaer, of Mount Morris, that he was 
acquainted with Mrs. Catherine Mancius, the daughter of Jacob Vanderheyden, the 
Indian trader, who, the reader of my previous article will remember, was present at 
the time that Mr. Williams was left among the Indians at the head of Lake George, 
and who, afterwards, in conversation with Thos. Williams, seemed anxious to pry 
into the subject. Mrs. Mancius mentioned to Mr. Van Rensselaer, that when Talley- 
rand was in this country, he made her father a visit. It is certainly singular to find 
Talleyrand in contact with old Jacob Vanderheyden. Again, Mr. Treadway, of 
Malone, informs me that on mentioning this subject to Mr. Brockway, a gentleman 
whose statements are to be relied on, he told him that in 1853 he was at the Sault 
Ste. Marie; when two Frenchmen, fresh from France, arrived there, and made earnest 
and particular inquiry for Mr. Williams, supposing that he was there, or in the 
neighborhood. Both were unable to speak English, and one was a liomish Prie^ 
On being informed where he lived, they immediately employed some Indians to paddle 
them in a canoe, through the lake to Mackinac, with a view to take a steamer for 



422 THE LOST PRINCE. 

On one point I must touch before dismissing consideration of the 
Prince de Joinville and his mission — viz. the motives of Louis 
Piiihppe in reveahng to Mr. Williams the secret of his birth. The 
clue to these will be found in his political position. The r6ginie of 
the citizen king had on it the stain, not only of illegitimacy, in the 
eyes of the royalists, but of treachery, ingratitude, and hypocrisy ; 
" Oes D'Orleans sont de si honn^tes gens," was a compliment of 
contraries after the days of July. The world regarded Louis 
Philippe simply as a clever rogue, who could make good pen and 
ink sketches, and the problem concerning whom was whether lie 
would die in his bed. Between Bonapartists, legitimists and ultra 
liberals, his chances of extreme unction were slender. Whatever 
would enable him to gain the confidence and affection of the world, 
to conciliate or crush opposing parties, while he united in himself 
the souvenirs of the past, would be esteemed by him a master-stroke 
of policy. Could he persuade France that he loved the memory of 
Louis XVL, and revered the Emperor, while himself the incarna- 
tion of liberalism, and thus twine his republican crown with wreaths 
from St. Helena and the Madeleine, that so the eagle, and the tri- 
color, and the drapeau blanc, might, in combination, ornament and 
defend his throne, he might yet have a sepulchre in St. Denis, and 
a list of successors like Hugh Capet. 

From those who have been well termed " courtiers of all times, 
all dynasties, and all powers," he had doubtless learned those secrets 
which pursue a throne, and among them the existence of Louis 
XYIL, a fact more clearly evinced by the Naundorff discussion. 
With a genius which would have shone in the neighborhood of the 
Astor, he seems to have designed converting France into a museum 
for monarchical and imperial relics, dead and living, and astonishing 
the world with the sight of the lusty embonpoint of the captive of 

Green Bay. Here my information ends. But Mr. Williams has frequently told me 
that strangers from abroad have inquired for him, but seemed quite unsuspicious that 
their visits were of any meaning or moment, and has no particular recollection of the 
ixicld«at referred to. 



DE JOINVILLE AND DE ESAUCHESNE. 423 

the Temple, side by side with that of tlie sarcopiiagus of the 
mighty IS'apoleon. At the command of his father, De Joinville 
brought to Paris the coffined earthquake of St. Helena, and 
Louis Philippe reverently deposited it under his throne, while 
he despatched his son across the Atlantic, to bring over, with his 
'xbdication signed, the living monarch, whose quiescent simplicity 
alight neutralize the explosive properties of the imperial corpse. 
With Williams in his hands, how boldly could he have confronted 
the Legitimists, and said, " You accuse me of plotting against 
Dharles X., and usurping the throne of Henry Y. Look at your 
own work and your own position. The wrongs of this man at once 
[sike from you all pretence of right, and consign you to historic 
i3amnation, as the blackest and foulest intriguers Avho ever swindled 
vhemselves into empire. I act a great, a noble, a generous part. I 
restore to France the consecrated dust of her heroic chief, and bring 
uack from exile, to wealth, honor, and happiness, all that remains 
to the nation of her ancient kings. Between my royal cousin and 
myself there is no rivalry. My throne is based on the election of 
the people, but if he be deemed by any to have right, he surrenders 
to me. His religion, his profession, his language, his habits, his 
draining, unfit him for political life in France. All parties are thus 
extinguished. I have shown I trust the nation ; let the nation trust 
me. In me Bonapartist, Eoyalist, Liberal, find no opponent, but a 
friend and father." 

Such, in brief, is my explanation of the conduct of Louis Philippe, 
and I deem it sufficient. You cannot say, there was any improba- 
bility he would reveal to Mr. Williams the secret of his birth, after 
bringing to France the ashes of Napoleon. The one is but the 
counterpoise of the other, requisite to prevent the other from being 
mischievous, while both together were calculated to extinguish 
parties, and make all souvenirs, all interests, all anticipations, 
centre in Louis Philippe. 



424 THE LOST PRINCE. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE BATTLE OF THE AFFIDAVITS. 

My principal reason for urging Mr. Williams to consent to the 
publication of his story, in the imperfect form it was first 
presented, was to elicit evidence, I doubted not must exist, in 
various quarters. I was not mistaken. While General Cass was 
the only person who had attempted anything like argument 
against Mr. Williams, with a result certainly not unfavorable to 
the latter, confirmation of his statements grew up in all directions. 
Appendix M. 

About the end of March, the Rev. Dr. Hawks received infor- 
mation from a friend in New Orleans, that a lady residing there 
was in possession of important facts relative to the preservation of 
the Dauphin, and I immediately determined to go there. The day 
before I left New York, I was introduced by a friend to M. H. 
De Courcey who had written several letters in the " Phare de New 
York," and more recently in the " Courrier des Etats Unis," in 
opposition to me. I consented to this introduction, because, I 
supposed Mr. De Courcey misapprehended my motives, and I 
wished to assure him, the investigation was conducted with the 
simple desire of obtaining historic truth. He replied, he had the 
same feelings ; that the death of the Dauphin was a fact no well- 
informed Frenchman denied ; admitted, however, there were some 
singular points in the evidence ; said, the next day he was going to 
Prance; and, as he was well acquainted with M. de Beauchesne, 
would confer with him on the subject; and, in conclusion, assured 
me, as a Legitimist, Louis XYIL, if alive, would have all his sym- 
pathies, notwithstanding any diflferences of religious faith, and 
expressed his firm conviction, the truth could not be hidden. Mr. 
A. Pleming, who introduced me to him, was present at our inter- 



THE BATTLE OF THE AFFIDAVITS. 425 

view. The next day we set out for our respective destinations. 
M. de Courcey by the French, and I by the Charleston steamer. I 
left New York, April 9, arrived at Charleston in two days, and 
following the mail route across South Carolina, Georgia, and Ala- 
bama, reached New Orleans on the 18th of that month. 

By the kindness of friends, I soon obtained an interview with 
the lady in question, and, after several conversations, in the pre- 
sence of witnesses of the highest respectabihty, ascertained the 
exact amount of information she had, or was willing to communi- 
cate. I found her in a little wooden house in the Faubourg. It is 
a part of the town where everything remains as it was in old 
French times, and it seemed strange to make inquiries in such a spot 
respecting events which happened in Europe more than half a 
century ago. Mrs. Brown had resided in New Orleans since 1820. 
She bore the marks of extreme age, though only seventy -five years, 
and gave me the impression of one who had seen great vicissitudes. 
Her health was very infirm, as she was afflicted with a cancer in 
the breast, which threatened soon to put an end to her life ; but 
her mind was clear and intelligent, and there Avas often much terse 
vigor in her language. She had read nothing wliich had been 
written in relation to Mr. Williams, did not even know there was 
any such person now living, and was entirely ignorant of the 
recent questions at issue. As the best means of arriving at the 
fiicts of the case, I requested her to tell me the story of her life. 
It was in substance, as follows : She was educated in Edinburgh, 
where she became acquainted with and married a man named 
Benjamin Oliver, a French republican, who took her to the conti- 
nent. She obtained a divorce from him, and returned to 
Edinburgh ; where, in 1804, she again married Joseph Deboit, 
secretary to the Count D'Artois, who then resided in Holyrood 
House. Deboit had previously been in the service of Louis XVI., 
and ]ianded the Dauphin into the carriage on the night of the 
flight to Varennes, when the young Prince said they were going 
to the play. Soon after her marriage, the Count D'Artois left 



426 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Edinburgh, and went to the continent, she believed to Eussia, to 
see the king, but at this distance of time could not speak with cer- 
tainty concerning a thing in which she had no part. 'She remained 
in the palace at Holyrood, until after his return to England. In 
1807, she joined her husband in London. Here, she first became 
acquainted with the Count de Lisle, as Louis XVIII. was then 
called, and with the Duke and Duchess D'Angoul^me. As her 
husband occupied a confidential position in the royal family, she* 
became very intimate with them, and especially with the Duchess 
D'Augoul^me. There was much conversation among them at that 
time respecting the Dauphin, and Joseph Deboit told her, he was 
not dead, but carried away for safety. Being one day alone with 
the duchess, she mentioned what Deboit had said, and asked her if 
it was true, and if she knew what had become of him. The duchess 
replied, without any hesitation, and with an expression of pleasure, 
that she had assurance her brother was in America. Here, the 
conversation dropped, as the duchess did not seem inclined to 
enter into particulars. In the same year, however, she remembers 
having heard, either from the Duchess D'Angouleme, or from 
Deboit, but cannot, after so long a time, say which, that a royal- 
ist named Bellanger, was the chief agent in removing the Prince. 
As everything said to her was confidential, she spoke to no one 
except her husband of what she heard. " All the members of the 
royal family," she said, were well acquainted with the fact of the 
Dauphin^s preservation," and, smiling at the idea of their ignorance, 
she continued, "they all knew it, sir, they all knew it." 

She returned to Holyrood House with her husband, who died 
there in 1810, but, after his decease, she still continued her intimacj'' 
with the Bourbon family, and was employed by them, in various 
ways, until the Restoration. 

Mrs. Brown, I heard, had for years mentioned to Mrs. Reid, of 
Ingw Orleans, and others, that she had been employed, to put into 
a convent some young woman connected, in some way, with the 
royal family, and I questioned her particularly about this, but could 



THE BATTLE OF THE AFFIDAVITS. 427 

obtain no information. She did not tliink it had anything to do 
with the matter in hand, of which she would state all she knew, 
but she added, " there are some things, about which history had 
better be silent." This girl passed for her daughter, and is now 
living at a convent in France. This subject seemed to irritate 
her, and, being urged by those with whom she had previously, in 
unguarded moments, conversed, I often recurred to it, but could get 
no fuller information. 

In 1809 she again went to France, and there, at a place called 
Morley, married an American gentleman, named George Brown, 
who led a wandering sea-faring life, in privateers and merchantmen. 
In 1812, Brown was saili-ng master, on board a privateer, called the 
True Blooded. Yankee, which was bought by Mr. Henry Preble, a 
London merchant, brother to Commodore Preble, The vessel 
was commanded by Thomas Oxnard. She showed me Brown's 
portrait, which was that of a handsome, gentlemanly man. 

In 1813, De Vaux, aide-de-camp to General Moreau, came to the 
convent, at Morley, in France, where she was staying, and said 
there was a crisis coming on, and she must cross the channel imme- 
diately, and carry despatches to the Count D'Artois, and the Count 
de Lisle, these, he sewed between the ticking and leather of her 
trunk. A badge, ornamented with fleurs de lis, which she still 
retains, was given her on the occasion, and she was told it would 
be useful to her, at several points she had to pass. Meeting a body 
of troops in one of these places, according to her instructions, she 
drew aside the folds of her dress, and exhibited the token, when 
every mark of respect was shown, and she was expedited on her 
journey. She arrived safely in England, and delivered the package 
into the hands of the Count D'x\rtois, in South Audley street, 
Grosvenor square, in the presence of M. de Belleville, 

Before she relinquished her connection with the royal family, the 
Due D\A7KjouUme came to lier, examined lier jpcqurs^ and remoTed 
everytliing relating to the private affairs of the Bourbons. 

Having executed her commissioD, she returned to France, and 



428 THE LOST PRINCE. 

went to sea with her husband ; narrowly escaped death by wreck 
and mutiny, but, at least, arrived safely in the Brazils, and kept 
school in St. Salvador. Owing to misfortunes they were very poor, 
but, as soon as Brown could collect means, they embarked for New 
York, in the Tom Bowling, or Bolyn, but he died at sea on June 7, 
1815, on the 4th July of which year, she arrived a widow in America. 
Her wanderings were yet far from being ended. A few months 
found her in the Havanna, where she was housekeeper to Grey and 
Fernandez. 

Business once more drew her to Europe, and here she again 
became conversant with facts that bear upon the case. Thrown 
back among her old associates, she resided in Edinburgh, with Mrs. 
Chamberlaw, whose husband had been secretary to the Count de 
Coigny, one of the intimates, as well as the Prince de Conde, of 
the Count D'Artois, while at Holyrood. Mrs. Chamberlaw had 
accompanied the royal family to Paris, and was then fresh from the 
Tuileries. She told her she had recentl}^ heard in the palace, that 
the Dauphin was alive, and had been carried to America by one 
Bellanger, who took him to Philadelphia. " This," she said, " was 
no news to me, as I had heard the same years before, but Mrs. 
Chamberlaw added, the Prince was still living there, and was known 
as Williams, an Indian missionary." 

The examination of Mrs. Brown, was conducted in the presence 
of an able and highly respectable lawyer, Mr. Bradford, and other 
persons. Having ascertained that she knew nothing of what had 
transpired at the north, and had not heard of the Rev. Eleazar 
Williams, she was asked, " Do you recollect whether Mrs. Chamber- 
law mentioned the Christian name of the Indian missionary, said 
to be the Prince, by Mrs. Chamberlaw ?" " It is so long ago, that 
I forget it now, but should probably recognise it, if I heard it." 
" Was it any Scripture name ?" " I can't say." " Was it Joseph ?" 
"No." " Was it Aaron ?" "No." " Was it Eleazar ?"" That 
was it, to the best of my recollection." Mr. Bradford smiled, as 
he wrote down the answer, perceiving, evidently, from her man- 



THE BATTLE OF THE AFFIDAVITS. 429 

ner, that her recognition of the name was genuine. Mrs. Brown 
went on to say, that, according to Mrs. Chamberlaw's statement, the 
subject had been much discussed in the palace, and that the royal 
family said, Williams was incompetent to reign, and his elevation 
to the throne would only increase the difficulties of the times — that, 
a man had come out from America to confer with them on the 
subject, and she had seen him. When he first came to the palace, 
there was a report that Louis XVII. was himself there. Money 
was given to this man, and he returned to America. Over and 
over again, I questioned Mrs. Brown, in the presence of many of 
the most respectable persons in New Orleans, if she was certain of 
these facts, and was assured, on the word of a dying Christian, that 
what she said was true. After this, I gave her my articles, in Put- 
nam, to read, of which she previously knew nothing, and showed 
her a faithful crayon sketch of Mr. Williams, by Fagnani, in which 
she immediately recognised the Bourbon lineaments. When she 
had read the articles, she said, " I only wish I was as certain of 
salvation, as I am that he must be the man." 

To test, in every possible way, Mrs. Brown's declarations, 
I applied to a lady who had known her intimately for many years, 
Mrs. Reid, sister-in-law of Commodore Patterson. She said she had 
known her for seventeen years, and was introduced to her as 
a person who had been intimate with the royal family of France, 
and that in conversation upon the events of her life, as long ago as 
twelve or thirteen years^ she had told her all the particulars con- 
tained in her present affidavit, and especially that the Dauphin, 
supposed to have died in the Temple, had heen carried to Philadel- 
phia^ hy a man named Bellanger^ and was an Indian missionary^ 
named Williams. Up to a few weeks, Mrs. Reid had never heard 
of the existence of Eleazar Williams, and had not as yet seen my 
articles. All she knew on the subject was derived, simply, from 
conversations with Mrs. Brown, in former years. "But," she 
added, " that you may have more than my word for this, and that 
I may feel more secure in making an affidavit, inquire of the Rev. 



430 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Mr. Whitall. He knows well what I have said to him, for years, on 
the subject." I accordingly went to Mr. Whitall, a laborious and 
foithful missionary of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and applied 
to him for information. " All that Mrs. Reid states," he said, " is 
correct, and you can depend upon it. I have heard the story from 
her for seven or eight years or more. But, to be on the safe side, 
I can swear to five. I never paid much attention to the subject, 
but I am ready to attest to the facts." 

This triple chain of testimony, thus standing secure, was drawn 
up, deliberately weighed, and sworn to by Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Reid, 
and Mr. Whitall, before G. Lugenbuhl, Esq., who himself added his 
testimony to the private worth and reliability of the witnesses; 
But, the city of New Orleans will stand voucher for that. Appen- 
dix K 

Besides obtaining this testimony, I endeavored to gain some 
information of Bellanger. One fact was testified to on all hands, 
by persons of highest respectability, that, in 1848, a paragraph did 
appear in the papers there, to the effect that, a person of that name, 
on his death-bed, had declared he brought the Dauphin to Ame- 
rica. I diligently examined the files of the " Delta," " Picayune," 
" Bee," " Commercial," and other papers, but without success. 
Those who have ever attempted a similar research, can appreciate 
the difficulty it entails, and the time and patience it requires. In 
cases where the recovery of property depended on information, 
thus to be obtained, it has taken years to effect the object. In none 
of the papers were the files complete. The " Bee" was that which 
approached nearest to it. Sometimes half a paper was missing, just 
at the time most likely for the information to occur. I also 
examined the records of the courts, hoping to find some clue in the 
lists of successions, and also the registers of burials. The law 
respecting the registry of deaths is practically a dead letter. 
Scarcely one in a dozen is recorded, and, in times of epidemic, the 
dead are fortunate if they are numbered. In one of the courts, I 
found the papers of a person named Bellanger, a native of Paris, 



THE BATTLE OF THE AFFIDAVITS. 431 

who married at St. Louis, in 1806 or 7, returned to France in 1816, 
and stayed there for several years — but, of him, whether dead or 
living, I could get no clue. The fact is, there liave been Beilan- 
gers innumerable in New Orleans. Bellanger, a jeweller, Bellan- 
ger, a gambler, Bellanger, a cooper, Bellanger de Bouill6, a noble- 
man, and friend of Le Kay de Chaumont, and Colonel de Ferriere ; 
and, to mention no more, one whose father was minister of Louis 
XVI. He died several years ago. I had an interview with his 
son, who said he expired in his arms, and. made no such confession. 

It has occurred to me, the report circulated in New Orleans, in 
1848, and which reached Mr. Williams, through Mr. Kimball, may 
have originated in some distorted account of Mrs. Brown's conver- 
sations ; and it may ultimately turn out, Bellanger was not in New 
Orleans so late as 1848, and. may have died, if he is dead, which 
some reports deny, at some far distant place or time. This may be 
so; but, when I bear in mind, the efforts made to conceal and 
falsify testimony, in every shape and way, it is just as probable, 
means have been found to hush the matter up. The account which 
Mr. "Williams received, is too particular to be altogether a dream. 
Meanwhile, thus much is certain that, years before Mr, Williams 
knew that Bellanger was a historic personage, or had any connec- 
tion Avith the events in the Temple, he was informed that he was 
the chief agent in bringing him to this country, though, from his 
ignorance of events, he imagined the name must be an assumed 
one — that so long ago as 1807, a living Avitness heard in the royal 
household, the same fact respecting Bellanger, and that M. Beau- 
chesne historically demonstrates, this agent of Louis XVIII. must 
have been the individual who removed the Prince. That he had 
his appropriate assistants is every Avay probable, and^none seem 
more adapted to the purpose than those which Naundorff's state- 
ment, and Mrs. Dudley's letter, alike indicate, a girl to amuse the 
Prince, and a lady of the queen's household to take charge of them 

both. 

. My duties called me home, and I was compelled to relinquish the 



432 THE LOST PRINCE. 

investigation. I came back by way of the Mississippi and the laKes, 
and as I was approaching New York, I read in a newspaper the 
following paragraph: 

" The ' Coiirrier des Etats Unis ' publishes the following affidavit of Mary 
Ann Wilhams, mother of the Rev. Eleazar Williams : 

^'- State of New York, Franhlin County, ss. 

" Personally appeared before me, the undersigned, one of the Justices of 
the Peace in and for the said county, Mary Ann Williams, and being duly 
sworn deposeth and says, that she is upwards of eighty years of age, but 
does not know her exact age ; that she is the widow of Thomas Williams, 
and that she is the natural mother of Rev. Eleazar Williams, and that she 
is aware of his pretensions to be the son of Louis XVI., and knows them 
to be false ; that he was her fourth child, and born at Caughnawaga; that 
at the time of his birth her sister took him to the priest to be baptized, and 
that her sister gave the priest the name of the child's godfather, which was 
Lazar, from which the child took his name ; that he was born in the spring, 
thinks in the month of June ; says that when he was about nine years old 
some of his father's friends from the States came to Caughnawaga and 
took him and a younger brother away, to send them to school ; that some 
time after he returned home and had a sore leg, which made him lame ; 
that they doctored his leg ; the sore was on his knee ; that sometimes it 
would heal up and break out again, and that they were sometimes fearful 
it would never get well ; that she has no recollection how the scar came 
on his face ; that she never knew of his having any trunk or medals 
in his possession ; and that her son Eleazar very strongly resembles his 
father, Thomas Williams ; and says that no persons whatever, either clergy- 
men or others, ever advised or influenced her in any manner to say that 
he was her son ; that the first intimation she ever had of his pretensions to 
a royal birth, was from one William Woodman, an Oneida Indian, who 
came to her, about three years ago, and asked her if she would not be 
willing to go before a magistrate and swear that Eleazar was not her son, 
but was given her to bring up ; she told him she would do no such thing, 
as she knew him to be her son; that Eleazar has since mentioned to her 
that some of his friends thought he was not an Indian, but descended from 



THE BATTLE OF THE AFFIDAVITS. 433 

royal parentage; «he told him it was no such thing, that he was her own 
son. 

her 

"Mary Ann + Williams. 
mark 
" Subscribed and sworn before me this 28th day of March, 1853. 

"Alfred Pulton, Justice of the Peace." 
As I folded the paper, I could but smile at the folly of an act, 
which, I felt sure, would recoil on its contrivers. On my arrival 
in the city I learned something of the history of the affidavit. It 
travelled a long distance before it saw the light. M. de Courcey, 
with whom I parted on the eve of going to New Orleans, took the 
document with him to France, and thence transmitted it to 
America, for publication in the " Courrier des Etats TJnis." 

I felt sorrow for M. de Courcey, because I could not allow myself 
to imagine be was a party to this transparent forgery. 
^ I felt sorry for M. de Courcey, because it is unpleasant, under any 
cn-cumstauces, to be made, however innocently, an instrument in 
assailing the reputation, and seeking to destroy the usefulness of 
another. 

Though M. de Courcey has styled me a romancer, using the 
word in its most offensive sense, I will not retaliate. 

The matter was assuming a serious form, and it was necessary to 
proceed with caution. In a western paper, the Eev. Mr. Marcoux, 
of St. Kegis, was openly spoken of as the author of the affidavit, 
and I knew of no one excepting him, in St. Eegis or Hogansburg, 
likely to correspond with M. de Courcey, whose initials only had 
been appended to his articles. But as the Eoman priesthood have 
the reputation of being astute, it seemed difficult to imagine he 
would lend himself to the transaction, which, according to the 
maxims of Talleyrandic morality, was worse than a crime — a blun- 
der. At my request, the Hon. Phineas Atwater, formerly Indian 
agent, undertook to discover the truth. He went to Hogansburg 
and made inquiries of Mr. A. Fulton, the magistrate before whom 

the affidavit was taken, and obtained the following certificate. 

19 



434 THE LOST PRINCE. 

" I certify that the affidavit sworn to before me in March last, by Mrs. 
Mary Ann Williams, was in the English language. She came to my office, 
in Hogansburgh, either in company with, or met there, the Rev. Francis 
Marcoixx, Roman Catholic priest at St. Regis. Two Indians were also 
present. Mr. Marcoux acted as interpreter, and put the questions to her in 
the Indian language, and interpreted them in English. 

^^ Hogansburgh July 8, 1853." " A. Eulton, J. P. 

Having learned the circumstances under which the affidavit was 
made, Mr. Atwater had an interview with Mr. Marcoux, and told 
him the object he had in view, when Mr. Marcoux acknowledged 
he had been agent in the matter, but said he was solicited, by 
letter, from Mr. de Courcey, to obtain the affidavit. How far he 
followed or outran the solicitations or instructions of M. de Courcey, 
he did not say, and this is a point these gentlemen must settle 
between themselves. I can only state facts. Mr. Atwater then 
proceeded to the residence of Mrs. Williams, whom he found two 
miles from Hogansburg, on the Racket river. He informed her of 
the object of his visit, when she consented to go to Hogansburg, 
and declare the truth. He had, however, great embarrassments to 
contend with, as there was no interpreter then in the village, with 
the exception of one entirely in the interest of Mr. Marcoux. But 
he had to make the best of circumstances, though, as Mrs. Williams 
was surrounded with Eoman Catholic Indians, who have a bitter 
hostility to Mr. WiUiams, he could not obtain from her general and 
full statements. They thronged around her, and embarrassed the 
examination, and it was impossible to keep them from her. How- 
ever, the old woman having heard the previous affidavit, to which 
she had put her mark, read to her, in Indian, determined to dispense 
with an interpreter, and express what she had to say, in her own 
language and manner, from which it was impossible to make her 
vary. Her declaration was taken down in MohWk by an Indian, 
and falsely translated by Antoine Barron, the Romish interpreter, 
under cover of a written oath of fidelity. I give it in both languages 
as follows, having corrected the translation : — 



THE BATTLE OF THE AFFIDAVITS. 435 

li Mary Ann Williams, ne teiakeniterontakwe ne Thomas Williams, 
etho wakeriwaniraton tsi wakatati raonhake ne A. Fulton, Esq., etho 
Hogansburg, eh nonwe siwennitare ne March tkenne, tsi nikadrihoten 
wakatati, ne wahakeriwaneken tsinakiere ne Francis Marcoux, Akwesasne 
Ratsihenstatsi, nok raonha wahatewennakaratate. nok wahakeriwanonton- 
nionse, ne kati tsi onen wahonkewennanotonse, etho wakeriwatshenri tsi 
iah ne tewaken nok iah oni tokenske teken tsini kaieren. Ne kati tewa- 
katonwentsioni nonsaktakwarisionko tsi nonwe nisewatewatanion. Ken 
kati kaien enkeriwanirate ne tokenske tsi nenkiere, tsiniiore keiare; nok 
tsinikewennoten enwat-iaton, nok iah onka taiontewennakaratate ; — waki- 
ron kati, iah tokenske teken tsi waton ne kaiatonsera ia-onka ne ietsiens- 
tatsi, nok oni ne oiashonha nonkwe teionkenikonaraten ; tsi wakeron riienha 
ne Eleazer, nok tsi wakatatsennaren ne kaiatonserake raonha-se ne Mr. 
Marcoux, ne Akwesasne ratsienstatsi wahakenaskwaien, nok oni, noiasoui 
nonkwe tsionatonwisen akatatsennaren nok raonha wahatewennakaratate. 
Ja-tokenske teken, tsi waton ne kaiatonsera rosinanonwakskwe ne riienha 
tehotkohe7i tiotierenten sonsasonkwaiatorenne neto tontahaientakwe tsi 
nonwe iehateweienstakwe. Keiare tsi roientakwe ne iontwistaniakta ne 
poseronni iakeniterontakwe ; raonha ne rokstenha wahariwisa tsi wahatka- 
raientakwe ne roienha, oh-ki ok nahoten tehonekon tsi iontenninontha, 
sarokenha nok Tsiawiskenha. 

"Kentho iesennaronnion ne keienhokonha, Peter, Catharine, Ignatius, 
Thomas [Eleazer tehothonhen^ Louisa, John, Peter, Hannah, Ehoda, 
Chai-les, Jarvis ; ok enskat wakewirense, onen tokat tsi wakateweton. 
Keiare tsi iakenenonne ne oseronni teiakeniterontakwe toha ioserake 
tsinae tsi tekiatonni'arikon konwaiats ; nok tsi keiaten hawe keienhokonha 
ne Eleazer, nok oni oiasonha, rakwanenne, nok oni tsi toha iateioserake 
etho ratoratskwe ne Oseronni teiakeniterontakwe. 

her 
"Mary Ann + Williams. 
mark. 

" Subscribed and sworn before me, this 8th day of July, 1853, 

" A. Fulton, Justice of Peace." 

TRANSLATION. 

" I, Mary Ann Williams, widow of the late Thomas Williams, of 
Caughnawaga, made a declaration on oath, before A. Fulton, Esq., at 



436 THE LOST PRINCE. 

Hogansburg, in the month of March last, at the request of the Rev- 
Francis Marconx, Priest of St. Regis, he acting as interpreter and putting 
the questions to me, which being read and explained to me, I found to con- 
tain what I did not intend to say and which is not true. I now wish to 
correct those errors, so far as my memory will allow, in my native 
language, without the intervention of any interpreter — that is to say — it 
is not true as stated in the affidavit, that no person, priest, or others, ever 
advised or influenced me to say, that Eleazar is my oion son. It was Mr. 
Marcoux the priest, at St. Regis, who tirged me with others, some women, 
to make the affidavit, and he acted as an interpreter on the occasion, 
as before stated. It is not true also, as stated in the affidavit, that iny 
adopted son had a sore leg when he returned from school the first time to us. 
I remember that my husband had a medal which he ordered Charles and 
Jarvis to pawn to a merchant for him. The names of my children were 
Peter, Catherine, Ignatius, Thomas (Eleazar adopted), Louisa, John, 
Peter, Hannah, Rhoda, Charles, and Jarvis ; I lost one child by miscar- 
riage after the birth of several that lived. I recollect going with my hus- 
band to Lake George, a great many years ago, and took with me Eleazar 
and another older boy, and that my husband was in the habit of going 

there almost every year.* 

her 
" Signed, Mary Ann + Williams. 
mark. 

" Subscribed and sworn to before me, this 8th day of July, 1853, 

" A. EuLTON, Justice of the Peace." 

Even -without the afBdavit, the facts recounted in the foregoing 
pages would be sufficient to show the utter falsehood of the state- 

* The force of this document lies in the twice used word " tehotkonen," " adopted." 
the meaning of which Mr. Marcoux has acknowledged to Mr. Fulton. But Barron, 
the interpreter, at the time pretended he did not understand the word — and, where 
Mrs. Williams denies the statement concerning the sore leg, contrary to his oath of 
fidelity, substituted " Eleazar " for adopted son — " riienha tehotkonen " in order to 
render the translation of a most precise document, as indefinite as possible. Ho 
trusted to our failure in minute observation, and nearly succeeded, as his breach of 
faith, was only discovered in correcting the proofs. Twice, then, in this affidavit, 
Mary Ann Williams acknowledges that Eleazar is not her son. He is "riienha 
tehotkonen," *' adopted son " in opposition to " riienha," which by itself, has the 
force of " own son." "Tehotkonen " is only applied to adopted persons of foreign 



THE BATTLE OF THE AFFIDAVITS. 437 

ments fabricated by Mr. Marcoux. That Eleazar Williams was nine 
years of age when he went to Massachusetts, that he was laid uji 
on his return to Canada, with sores on his knees and ankles ; that 
he resembled Thomas Williams in appearance, are stories so 
apocryphal that they could never have been hazarded, except 
under the idea that no farther inquiry would ever be made, but a 
lying affidavit be permitted to over ride the facts of history. But 
if such be the instrumentalities made use of against Mr. Williams, 
they will do him little injury. Kor does it require the confession 
of Mary Ann Williams to prove that Eleazar is only her adopted 
child. That he is her son may well be accounted a physical impos- 
sibility, and the mental characteristics, developed in the course of 
his history, are equally at variance with the supposition that he is 
an Indian, to say nothing of the testimony of Skenondogh. 
But the affidavit supplies the confirmation which some minds 
require. 

That efforts may be again made to tamper with her, and frighten 
or force her to unsay what she has said, I have no doubt. Indeed, 
Marcoux liad the impertinence, when he heard the nature of the 
affidavit she had voluntarily made, to carry her a second time to 
Mr. Fulton, who very properly declined, as he, doubtless, would 
have done in the first instance, if he could possibly have had the 
remotest conception of the iniquity intended to be perpetrated, 
to have anything to do with the affair. There stands the affidavit 
of Mrs. Williams. For once she has spoken freely, and were she 
now to make a thousand affidavits to the contrary, it could only be 
imputed to dark acts which shun the light. 

The conduct of the Eev. Mr. Marcoux, of St. Regis, in this 



blood. The word "iontatewerawi " is used in cases of adoption from one Indian 
family to another. To crown his rascality, Barron wished to make an affadavit in 
English imptying by indirect language that the intention of Mrs. Williams was to 
assert that Eleazar is her own son. What are you to do with such men ? Happily 
their deception recoils upon themselves. 



438 THE LOST PRINCE. 

transaction, is of such a nature, that I cannot trust myself to cha- 
racterize it as it deserves. The simplest statement of the truth 
seems to savor of exaggeration. A Christian minister enters a 
foreign country, bringing with him an aged, and, I may say, dying 
woman, who stands to him in the sacred relation of a member of 
his flock — he carries her before a magistrate of that country, 
places in her hand the word of God, and voluntaril}'^ undertakes to 
act as interpreter of her sentiments, in a matter affecting vitally 
the reputation and welfare of a citizen of that country, who is, at 
the same time, her adopted child. It seems impossible to conceive 
a case in which more solemn demands could be made on a man for 
fidelity, or more pledges tacitly given by him of adherence to the 
truth. The office of the ministry, the pastoral relation, the 
responsible duty of interpreter, the sacred bond subsisting between 
the maker and the subject of the affidavit, and the delicate 
position of the citizen of one country availing himself of the 
magistracy of another, all seem so many guarantees, that if truth 
could be found anywhere, it would be here. Now, it must be 
remembered, this clergyman has previously tried in vain to induce 
this woman to make a certain statement, which she has perempto- 
rily refused to make. She now appears before the magistrate, 
supposing that she is about to testify to the truth. Taking 
advantage of her ignorance of all languages but Indian, and 
relying upon the obscurity of a barbaric tongue to hide from the 
world his imposture, this clergyman falsely interprets her answers 
to the magistrate, substitutes wholesale statements, adapted to his 
own ends, for those which she, in reality makes, then, falsely 
interprets his interpretation to her, procures her oath to his fabri- 
cation, poisons the fountains of truth and justice at their primal 
and most sacred source, and seeks to send the poor woman into the 
grave with a sworn lie upon her lips, against the child of her 
adoption, that he might at once destroy his reputation, and deceive 
the whole world upon a grave question of history, I think all 



KIN AND KIND. 439 

must admit that tins is one of the most high-handed and gratui- 
tous acts of imposition ever practised. 

America, a free country ! "What is there left us of freedom, if 
foreigners may come into the United States, and, hy the lips of 
otliers, swear away the characters of our most estimable citizens? 
There are noble and honorable men and women in the Roman com- 
munion. They are infinitely above treachery like this, and will as 
severely reprobate it as I can do. N'or do I think there will be want- 
ing many persons who will consider the crime perpetrated by this 
priest, as too great and daring to have been undertaken on indivi- 
dual responsibility, and who will ask what is the natural inference 
from an act so strangely revolting ? No persons would, to gain any 
ordinary point, run such risks, and the only cause to which it is 
reasonable to attribute so perfidious a transaction is, that it was 
felt necessary, at all hazards, to put a stop to investigation, and 
prevent the truth from flashing on the world. But in this case, as 
well as in every other in which attempts have been made to concel 
or pervert facts, the result has been precisely contrary to what was 
anticipated, and may serve as an additional confirmation of one 
of the homeliest maxims of proverbial philosophy. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

KIN AND KIND. 

Thkee remains for me only one unpleasant task, which is, briefly 
to criticise the remarks upon the history of Mr. Williams, in the 
Appendix and Notes to a recent edition of the "Redeemed 
Captive," edited by Dr. Stephen W. Williams. The authority of 
this gentleman has, by many, been deemed decisive, because a 
member of the Williams family, and, therefore, ex naturd^ 
acquainted with the subject on which he writes, and competent to 



440 THE LOST PRINCE. 

give an autlioritative opinion upon it. " In the year 1846," he says, 
" I prepared and wrote a ' Genealogy and History of the Williams 
Family in America,' which was published in a large-sized duodecimo 
volume, with plates, in the year 1847." Now, it appears 
that, in this volume, there is no mention made of the singular 
incidents relative to Mr. Williams's disputed parentage ; although, 
while compiling it. Dr. Williams saw, conversed, and corresponded 
with, his supposed kinsman. He did not make, he complains, " the 
most distant allusion to his royal descent, or to his ever having had 
an interview with Be Joinville. The reader can judge whether, if 
he believed himself of royal descent, he would not have alluded to 
the fact." 

This is strange reasoning. Does a person always converse with 
strangers upon subjects nearest to his heart? It is not characteris- 
tic of Mr. Williams to obtrude his private concerns on others, and 
hundreds, within the last year, might have used the same argument, 
and said Mr. Williams never spoke on the subject — ergo, he has 
no faith in it. But the reader will say, Dr. Williams and Mr. Wil- 
liams were not strangers, for, says the Dr., " I have known him 
since he was quite young," — from which it is fair to infer an 
intimate acquaintance. The first time Mr. Williams remembers 
having seen Dr. Williams was in 1826, when he was not quite a 
child, and they have met four or five times since. The Dr. himself 
says, " I had but little knowledge [i. e. hearsay knowledge] of 
Eleazar's family, beyond his descent from Eunice Williams;" so 
that unless there be some mystic intuition in blood, I cannot see Dr. 
Williams has had any more personal advantages than others. But 
the Dr. is a man of observation, and " he has seen " the skin of Mr. 
\^illiams, and therefore " ought to know." " He showed me a scar 
on his side, which he said was in consequence of a wound he 
received in the late war with Great Britain. He requested me to 
examine that scar, for the purpose of determining whether I thought 
such a wound would be sufficient to entitle him to a pension from 



KIN AND KIND. 441 

Congress. I do not know liow much tlie color of his skin may have 
altered since then, under his dress, but at that time it was more the 
color of an Indian than a white man." Now, inasmuch as the tex- 
ture and color of the skin cannot change, I am compelled to say 
that, in this last assertion. Dr. Williams speaks untruly in fact, and 
refer the reader, who has not himself had an opportunity of personal 
examination, to the medical certificates. The opinion of a man is 
worth nothing whose mind is so warped by prejudice as to make 
such an assertion. The skin of Mr. Williams is peculiarly soft, deli- 
cate, and feminine. To the doctor's statement, on this head, I can 
only oppose a flat denial. But let all this pass. 

Mr. Williams made, it seems, certain oral statements to Dr. Wil- 
liams, which are entirely inconsistent with what he has since said ; 
among them, that his mother was a Frenchwoman. This is an 
absurdity into which even Mr. Marcoux would not fall. It is well 
known that Mrs. Williams is almost entirely of Indian blood. Her 
descent is as follows. Her great-grandmother was a half-breed, and 
married a Frenchman ; their daughter married an Onondaga Indian 
of full blood, and their child, her mother, did the same. Mr. 
Williams never could have said, on such a subject, what is here 
imputed to him. The doctor's memory is as much at fault as his 
observation. 

We have, then, the following peculiarly strange statement, as 
coming from Mr. Williams : " He married Miss Mary Jourdan, a 
distant relative of the King of France, from whom he has been 
honored with many splendid gifts, among the rest a golden cross 
and star. He has one son by the name of John." All this, the 
reader must remember, was inserted by the Dr. in the genealogy of 
the Williams family, as having been told him, in conversation, by 
Mr, Williams. But there was another remarkable piece of intelli- 
gence, which, in the original text, follows the word John, and 
which our author had the prudence to omit in the Appendix and 
ISTotes, lest it should reveal the worth and character of his other 

reminiscences — '' He has a son John, born , now (1846) on a 

1 0* 



442 THE tOST PRINCE. 

visit to the King of France, by liis request." Most veracious his- 
torian, and faithful chronicler of table-talk ! And Mr. Williams 
told you, actually, his son was, in the year 1846, in France, on a 
visit to Louis Philippe? Yes, sir, he told it you in the same breatii 
he told you his wife was a relative of -the King of France, and the 
King had sent him a cross and star, bat that breath never proceeded 
from his lips. John "Williams has never been out of America. 
You knew so little of Mr. Williams's personal history, you could 
not tell when his son was born, but you were very sure that, then, 
when you were writing, 1846, he was in France. 

But Dr. Williams contradicts himself in a manner which shows 
how little reliance can be placed on any of his recollections. On 
p. 174, we are told by him, Mr. Williams never made the '"''most 
distant allusion " to " his ever having had an interview with the 
Prince de Joinville ;" and lo ! on p. 177 we read, " He frequently 
told me and my family that this msitfrom the Prince teas in conse- 
quence of his relationship to his wife, and that he received his pres- 
ents from the same cause. His stories here were much at variance 
with those in the magazine." I wonder with what Dr. Williams's 
stories are at variance. 

Still there remains another difficulty. Mr. Williams wrote to 
the Doctor several times, speaking of members of the Williams 
family as his relatives, and this, we are told, is conclusive evidence 
of the falsehood of all his statements respecting the Prince de 
Joinville. Here, I will let Mr. Williams speak for himself, in words 
with which you are already familiar. 

"New York, September 12, 1853. 
"To Dr. S.W.Williams. 

" Sir : — ^Your recent edition of the Redeemed Captive was only yes- 
terday put into my hands, by a friend. In it I perceive a note in especial 
relation to myself. I must express my astonishment, that before you took 
the liberty of thus using my name, you did not inform me of your intention. 



KIN AND KIND. 443 

or, at any rate, that you did not have the courtesy to send me a copy of 
the work, on its publication, that I might have an opportunity of imme- 
diately defending myself against your assault on my reputation, and which 
I am constrained to say, exhibits as little of the feeling of a kinsman, as 
it does of the candor and truthfulness of a gentleman. Nothing on my 
part, that I am aware of, in our intercourse, can justify the malicious 
spirit displayed by you. You are pleased to call me " a distinguished 
gentleman," at the same time you stoop to every artifice which meaimess 
can dictate to injure me in the public estimation. It is most true that in 
letters, as well as in conversation, I spoke of myself to you, as well as to 
others, after my interview with the Prince de Joinville, as a member of the 
Williams family — for the habits and feelings of a lifetime are not to be 
shaken olf in an hour. I did so precisely in the same manner that I still 
continue to call myself Eleazar Williams, and to speak of Mrs. Mary Ann 
Williams, of St. Regis, as my mother, though she has given a solecnn 
affidavit to the contrary. Besides which, at the time of which you speak, I 
had not had the opportunity of giving the subject the attention which I have 
since done. I had nothing but the revelation of the Prince de Joinville to 
depend on, and, as I had no intention of assuming the public position, in 
this affair, into which I have been forced tlirough circumstances, I did not 
consider it necessary to thrust the question of my foreign extraction into a 
genealogical account of the Williams family. There were also feelings of 
delicacy towards that family, and an unwillingness to rupture ties which 
to me were so endearing, which kept me longer silent than I should other- 
wise have been. All generous and candid minds will, I think, appreciate 
the difficulties of my position, and not impute to deception what was the 
result of the uncertainty respecting my own history, and feelings of affec- 
tion for those who had treated me so kindly, and for whom I can never 
cease to entertain the regard of a kinsman. In respect to other matters, 
you have grossly misunderstood and misrepresented me. The thought of 
my wife's being a relative of the King of France never entered into my 
mind. As her name indicates, I spoke of her, to you, as a supposed mem- 
ber of the family of Marshal Jourdan, which I believe to be the case. As 
to my mother, or rather, if I must be precise, Mrs. Mary Ann Williams, 
being a French woman, that I never could have said, for she is more, at 
least, than tteree-fourths an Indian, in blood, and has every outward indi- 



444 THE LOST PRINCE. 

cation of her race. She can speak no language but the Mohawk. As to 
the cross and star, there are such things in my possession, but I received 
them from the Indian family of which I supposed myself a member. You 
have, in these and other respects, utterly misconstrued what passed between 
us in conversation, and imputed your misconception to me. Unless I am 
greatly mistaken, you make me say, in your genealogical work, that my 
son had gone to France for an education, which is an absurdity of which I 
never could have been guilty. In short, my dear sir, it is not every person 
who is competent to report, truthfully, the substance of a familiar conver- 
sation, and you seem to be among those who cannot. What I have writ- 
ten, I am ready to acknowledge, but you must pardon me if I demur 
against pleading guilty to your confused recollections and misstatements. 
It is with deep regret that I have felt compelled to speak thus to one whom 
I formerly respected and esteemed, but you have, by your own misconduct, 
forced me to it. 

" I am, sir, you obedient servant, 

" Eleazar Williams. 
" Dr. Stephen W. Williams, 

"Deerfield." 

The statement of Dr. Lothrop I have elsewhere disposed of. 
The opinion of the late Gov. Williams, of Vermont, as to Mr. Wil- 
liams's age, is to be estimated by his ovrn account, " although I 
cannot fix upon any particular data, yet my impression is the same 
as yours, that he was born in 1790." The reader has had " particular 
data" enough to arrive at a very different opinion. Gov. Williams, 
in fact, knew nothing about the subject, he had not examined into 
it, nor thought upon it; and I cannot understand that the mere fact 
of a person's name being Williams renders him any more competent 
a judge on this point than others. 

" Such," says Dr. Williams, " is some of the evidence to show 
that the Dauphin, if living, cannot be Eleazar Williams." I should 
rather say, such is some of the evidence to show that Dr. Stephen 
W. Williams has been writing on a subject he does not understand. 

But the doctor next favors us with some of his historical 



KIN AND KIND. 446 

learning, and proceeds to show " by direct and positive evidence," 
that the Dauphin is actually dead. The italics are his own, and 
his idea of direct and positive evidence is illustrated by this list 
of authorities, which is as follows: "Thiers, AHson, Scott, the 
' Debats,' a French Journal, devoted to the interest of the Orleans 
dynasty,' the ' Encyclopedia Americana,' ' Abbot's History of Marie 
Antoniette,' and Putnani's Magazine?'' Though in justice I will 
add, that he also brings in the ' Memoirs of the Duchess D'An- 
goul^rae,' which speaks of " three respectable surgeons testifying 
to his death." I trust the reader will not suppose that I have so 
long allowed "The Notes and Appendix" of Dr. Williams, to 
wander about the world, and be quoted, in discerning journals, as 
conclusive authority, because I felt any difficulty in answering his 
random assertions and inconclusive reasoning, but simply because 
I did not deem what he said deserving of notice, and was quite 
willing to bide the time when I could exhibit his facts and argu- 
ments in their proper light. If I have spoken with severity, it is 
because there is an evident desire throughout the whole of Dr. 
"Williams's remarks, to injure his former acquaintance, and the 
manifestation, in a more unkind shape, of the feeling which 
prompted another member of the family to say he would never 
have shown him the attention he did, had he imagined he was 
not the descendant of Eunice Williams, but only the son of Louis 
XVI. Family pride and affection are things to be honored, but 
they become despicable, when they make us spiteful and unjust. 
Those members of the Williams family, who have known most of 
Mr. Williams, confide in, respect, and love him. 



446 THE LOST PRINCE. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

OONCLUSIOlSr. 

I HAVE now gone over the proposed ground, and presented 
everything in my possession, that can aid in the formation of 
opinion on the point discussed. It remains, briefly, to indicate the 
general bearing of facts and probabilities. But I have endeavored 
so to arrange my materials, that the reader, who has accompanied 
me through the preceding pages, will scarcely need any formal 
summing up of evidence. 

There are before us two great bodies of fact and testimony — one 
proceeding from Europe, and, in a great measure, long since familiar 
to the public, who were, however, destitute of that clue to its 
meaning and connection, which a single fact alone can give — the 
other, recently rising to view, in this country. 

The first proves that Louis XVII. did not die in the Temple, in 
the year 1795. 

The second proves the exceedingly high probability, approaching, 
if it does not attain to moral certainty, that Louis XVII. now lives 
in the person of the Rev. Eleazar Williams. 

I purposely assume a moderate position, in respect to my conclu- 
sion. My own belief in the identity is firm. But knowing the 
fallibility of human testimony and circumstantial evidence, I place 
myself on strong, because safe ground, and say, what all reasonable 
persons will, I think, concede, that the evidence adduced carries 
probability to nearly its highest extent. If any one shall say it 
makes the fact certain, he will find no opponent in me. I believe 
it does. 

As the subject at first stood, there was a balance of probabilities 
against the identity. I met an entire stranger, who told me a mar- 



CONCLUSION. 447 

vello'fis story, hovering on the shadowy verge of possibility. He 
had tie appearance of simple, unpretending sincerity, but had no 
means of substantiating his statements. He declared certain facts, 
of whioh he had been an eye and ear witness, but how these 
would tally with history he had no idea, or a vague one. Accord- 
ing to the sage maxims of some, I should have dismissed my new 
acquaintance as a monomaniac or a fabricator. But I had been 
taught, since infancy, to regard faith in testimony as the principle 
of power, to prove all things, and to hold fast that which is good. 
Reserving in suspense, my ultimate judgment, I was willing to 
trust one who seemed trustworthy, till he proved l.'imself the con- 
trary ; because, although it was more improbable that a person 
regarded by the world, for more than fifty years, as an Indian, 
should, in childhood, have been king of France, than that a cler- 
gyman should invent, there was a redeeming moral probability, in 
f^ivor of his truthfulness, not lightly to be set aside. I remembered 
who had told me to judge not by the appearance, but to judge 
righteous judgment, and who was rejected by those who trans- 
gressed the rule. The very improbability of what Mr. Williams 
said, was, in one point of view a prima facie argument in his favor, 
since it was not likely that a sane and sensible man, the member 
of an honorable profession, a minister of the Church of Christ, 
would risk all, in this life and the next, on untruths which would 
not bear a moment's serious examination. I believed in the power 
of a fact to vindicate its own truth, and reasoned, if this were a 
fact, it must have left a pathway all along, which, though obscured 
by ten thousand cross tracks, would become evident, on examina- 
tion ; and that opposition and discussion would only aid in the 
development of truth. The result is before the reader. I claim, 
in this-volume, to have adduced evidence which reverses the first 
position of things, and to have thrown the overwhelming balance 
of probabilities in favor of the identity of Louis XYII. and the 
Rev. Eleazar Williams. 
How far these probabilities fall short of historic certainty, a brief 



448 THE LOST PRINCE. 

summary of the evidence will show. To repeat conclusio=.iS, in 
conjunction, which have already been stated separately i; here 
inevitable. 

I. The great fundamental fact that, Louis XVII. did not dir in the 
Temple, on the 8th June, 1795, has been proved by an accumulation 
of evidence, which would compel the assent of any impartial jury. 
Those who assert the fact of death, deprive themselves of the 
benefit of any alternative. Their position is the strongest possible, 
if sustained, because it expresses no uncertainty; and, indeed, 
nothing short of this would have availed them. They say, he died 
at a particular time and place, and, pointing to a certain dead body, 
declare it was his. Disprove the last assertion — and they have 
nothing more to produce. The witnesses they cite, are, 1, four 
physicians, and, 2, two jailers. The physicians testify they know 
nothing about the matter. They saw a dead body, but were 
entirely ignorant whose it was. The jailers stand convicted of 
gross falsehood, in regard to an asserted fact necessary to the 
truth of their testimony, and no jury would, therefore, believe 
them on oath. There is, thus, no evidence to prove the death of 
Louis XYIL, but that of two men convicted of falsehood. 

On the other hand, it has been shown, 

1. That it is physically impossible the body, described in the 
proces verbal, could be that of Louis XYII. : and, 

2. That the police records of June, 1795, prove he was removed 
from prison before the 8th of that month. 

So far the naked fact. In explanation of it, the history of 
France shows that, prior to the French Eevolution, the Count de 
Provence was plotting to obtain the throne, and anxious to 
supplant his unfortunate brother; that to obtain this end, he 
fomented the troubles in the kingdom with the hope of forcing 
Louis XVI. to abdication ; that, the king and queen distrusted him, 
on account of his unprincipled ambition, and abstained, at their 
death, from committing their children to his care ; that, after 
usurping the nominal regency of the kingdom, the Count de 



CONCLUSION. 449 



Provence attempted, by means of intriguing agents, to obtain the 
sovereign power, and corresponded with the most extreme of the 
revolutionary leaders ; that having pledged himself, in a proclama- 
tion, to release Louis XVII. from the Temple, there is evidence he 
found means, through his agents, to surround the imprisoned 
Prince with persons devoted to his own interests, who, with the 
probable connivance of members of the Pvepublican Government, 
took advantage of a treaty made by the Convention with Oharette, 
the Yendeean leader, in which it was stipulated, Louis XVII. 
should be delivered to him, on the 13th June, 1795, to remove him 
from the Temple, and circulate the report of his death, having 
adroitly substituted a dying child in his stead. 

II. The series of facts next in order are those which intimate, or 
prove, that the royal family of France were cognisant of the exist- 
ence of the youthful king, viz. : — 

1. The confession of the Duchess D'Angouleme, to the wife of 
the secretary of the Count D'Artois, in 1807, that she knew her 
brother was alive, and in America. 

2. The contradictions and inconsistencies attending the funeral 
solemnities for the departed Bourbons, on the Eestoration ; the 
omission of any respect to the memory of Louis XYIL, made only 
more glaringly evident by the decree to erect a monument to him, 
and the actual preparation of an epitaph, under the orders of Louis 
XYIII ; and, also, the rejection by the royal family, of the asserted 
heart of Louis XA^'IL, in the possession of Peletan. 

3. The strange conduct of the Duchess D'Angouleme, in respect 
to the pretenders, and especially Herr ITaundorff. 

The list might be extended, but these are here sufficient. 

III. We come, now, to the circumstances which, historically, pro- 
ject from the transactions in Europe to serve as means of future 
identification. These are often very trivial and minute, when 
viewed separately, but, in combination, they acquire an irresistible 
cogency, if it be found they all centre on some one individual, no 
matter in what part of the world he may be found. 



450 THE LOST PRINCE. 

1. The individual last known to have been with Louis XYII. in 
the Temple was named Bellanger, and was a confidant and creature 
of Louis XVIIL ; and, it seems evident that, if the Prince were 
removed from the Temple, as it is proved he was, Bellanger, from 
his official position as acting commissary, which gave him, for the 
time being, supreme command in the prison, must have been the 
chief agent in the affair. 

2. Louis XVTL, at the time of his removal from the Tower, was 
in a state of imbecility, bordering on idiocy. 

3. He had on his person the following marks, 1. A scar over the 
eyebrow, from a blow inflicted by Simon. 2. Tumors on both 
elbows. 3. Tumors on both wrists. 4. Tumors on both knees. 
5. Inoculation marks on his arm, one of which was in the form of a 
crescent. Besides which, there were natural peculiarities not to be 
overlooked. 1. He strongly resembled the rest of his family in the 
general formation of the head, ear, jaw, chin, and mouth, but had 
hazel eyes, and a nose approaching to what is called the nez 
retrousse, which, as life advanced, would, probably, develope into 
a straighter shape, but could never acquire the aquiline form 
observable in the features of the Kegent Orleans, Louis XVI., or 
even Louis XYIII. 

4. It was intimated by Herr Faundorff that, besides Mr. B., pro- 
bably M. Bellanger, there was engaged in the removal of the Prince 
from France, a lady of the court, formerly in the service of Marie 
Antoinette, and also that the destination of the Prince was 
America. 

5. The time of action was 1795, when the Dauphin was ten years 
of age. 

IV. And, now, let us examine the corresponding circumstances 
which tend to identify the Rev. Eleazar Williams with the royal 
child. 

1. In the year 1795, a French lady and gentleman, the former of 
whom had been in the service of Marie Antoinette, came to Albany, 
having lately arrived from France, bringing with them a girl and a 



CONCLUSION. 451 

little boy, the latter of whom was called Monsieur Louis, was about 
ten years of age, and was characterized by the same listlessness and 
lack of observation recorded of Louis XVIL, and resembled, in the 
form of his head and face, the Rev. Eleazar Williams, and concern- 
ing whom much mystery was observed. The party suddenly dis- 
appeared. 

2. In the year 1795, two Frenchmen, one of whom appeared to 
be a Romish priest, carried an imbecile French boy to Lake 
George, and left him with Thomas Williams, which boy, on the 
oath of a credible witness, present at the time, and who has known 
him in after life, is the Eleazar Williams. 

3. His reputed mother acknowledges she adopted him. 

4. Eleazar Williams recovered his mind by a fiiU into Lake 
George, since which his memory is perfect — but the images which 
come to him from his previous life, tally with the events of the 
Dauphin's history. His condition of mind, his absence of distinct 
memory of his childhood, are proved on respectable testimony. 

5. He has all the natural characteristics, and all the accidental 
marks, necessary to identity with Louis XVIL 

6. Money was sent from France to a merchant in Albany, and 
was expended on his behalf. 

7. ISTathaniel Ely, who had charge of his education, was acquainted 
with the fact, that he was of noble birth. 

8. The rapid development of his mind indicates previous culture. 

9. His condition of health, from boyhood to the present time, 
constantly wavering between robust vigor and excessive prostration, 
accompanied with pains in the head and side, indicate that a con- 
stitution originally strong, received, at some time, a great shock, 
bnt which is anterior to anything which happened to him in this 
country. _ 

10. The mental and moral characteristics exhibited by him 
throughout life, tlie fertility of resource and military genius, which 
developed without culture and seemed innate, the generous ardor 
of his disposition, his religious feelings, his untiring labors for the 



452 THE LOST PRINCE. 

benefit of others, his absence of pecuniary tact and management, 
his ignorance even of his own powers, his gentle and forgiving char- 
acter, and tke very want of balance and symmetry in his mind, all 
agree, in combination with the best characteristics of the Bourbons, 
witk what we know from history of the natural disposition of the 
Prince, and with what it is natural to expect would be the charac- 
ter, the power, and the weakness of one whose birth, sufferings, 
and entire history are such as those of Louis XVII. and Eleazar 
Williams in continuous unity of existence. 

11. The wife of the secretary of the Count D'Artois, not only 
heard the confession of the Duchess D'Angoul^me that her brother 
was alive in America, bat also learned, in the Koyal family, that 
Bellanger brought him to this country, and that he was known in 
America as Eleazar Williams, an Indian missionary ; and it is on 
oath that she made, in substance these statements, in New Orleans, 
prior to the visit of the Prince de Joinville to this country in 1841. 

12. The Kev. Eleazar Williams did become acquainted, in 1848, 
with the fact that Bellanger brought the Dauphin to this country, 
and that he was asserted by Bellanger to be the Dauphin four years 
before he, or any other man on the continent of America, not in the 
secret, knew there was an historic personage named Bellanger, 
who could be suspected of kidnapping the Dauphin, or was in any 
way connected with him in the Temple. 

To these I might add other particulars, but those enumeratedi' 
suffice for my purpose. 

V. I proceed now to the series of facts connected with the inter- 
course between the Prince de Joinville and the Rev. Eleazar Williams. 

1. The Prince de Joinville came to the United States in 1838, 
and leaving his ships at Newport, went on a secret expedition into 
the interior of the country. 

2. Immediately after the return of the Prince to France, inquiries 
were made of the Erench vice-consul in Newport, concerning two 
servants of Marie Antoinette, who came to America during the 
French revolution. 



CONCLUSION. 453 

3. The Prince de Joinville, on his return to America in 1841, 
inquired earnestly of many persons, and in divers places, concern- 
ing the Eev. Eleazar Williams, asking questions about him which 
cannot be resolved into anxiety to find one who could give him 
historic information, with which there is nothing in their inter- 
course that tallies, except what bears on its face the appearance of 
deception, a covert and blind to other designs ; he caused word to 
be transmitted to him that he desired to see him; on meeting him 
he manifested agitation and surprise, and exhibited, in public, 
excessive deference beyond the requirements and the practice of 
ordinary politeness — even French politeness ; he corresponded with 
him by name through his secretaries for several years, personally 
recommended to Louis Philippe a petition transmitted by Mr. Wil- 
liams, from a Eoman Catholic chief, and thus, long lefore and long 
after their interview, was well acquained with his name. 

4. In the face of these facts, the Prince de Joinville represents 
his meeting with Mr. Williams to have been accidental, and denies 
he even remembered his name. 

5. Mr. Williams, on the other hand, asserts that, at the interview, 
sought and solicited by the Prince, the latter communicated to him 
the secret of his birth, and demanded a resignation of right to the 
French throne in favor of Louis Philippe. In respect to this asser- 
tion, every syllable in this volume which renders it probable that he 
is Louis XVIL, supports his credibility, while at the same time it 
discredits the aflBrmation of the Prince. 

6. One of the officers of the Prince de Joinville confessed to Mr. 
Geo. Sumner the mystery attending the expedition to Green Bay, 
and that Mr. Williams was spoken of as the son of Louis XVI. 

7. There is in the political circumstances of the times, the relative 
position of Louis Philippe to the Eoyalists and other parties in 
Prance, and his suicidal, albeit, compulsory folly in bringing the 
remains of Napoleon to France, everything to render it not impro- 
bable that, on the discovery of the secret of the existence of Louis 
XYIL, he would adopt the course which Mr. Williams asserts he did. 



454 THE LOST PRINCE. 

VI. In the next place, let me group together some few of the 
reasons for confiding in the statements of Mr. Williams. 

1. It is proved, that since the year 1803, or at the latest, 1804, 
he has been in the habit, with more or less regularity, of keeping a 
journal. 

2. In his journal for 1841, occurs a full and minute account, 
which bears every mark of having been written at the time, of his 
interview with the Prince together with all that led to, and fol- 
lowed it — which account has not been made public by his instru- 
mentality, although with his consent — and, in fact, has only been 
brought to light by a series of seeming accidents. 

3. The history of his life exhibits him, as a man whose word can 
be depended on, if we are to depend on the word of any one. It 
will take much, I think, to make the world believe that the gallant 
soldier, and the laborious self-denying missionary, could, without 
aim or purpose, have contrived a story so foul and dishonorable, if 
false, and in the absence, too, of any knowledge how it could be 
sustained. 

YII. A strong argument may also be drawn, in his favor, from 
the signal failure which has attended every effort to discredit his 
assertions. It matters not from what quarter the opposition has 
proceeded, or what have been the authorities cited. It is not diffi- 
cult, we think, to dispose alike of Beauchesne, Lasne, Gomin, 
Naundorff, Eichemont, the Prince de Joinville, General Cass, the 
Kev. Mr. Marcoux, and Dr. Stephen "Williams, while there has not 
been, in all the pages of argument, ridicule, and abuse, heaped 
on Mr. Williams and his friends, one single word which has not 
fallen to the ground harmless, as it respects the issue really in- 
volved. 

YIII. Nor is it unworthy of remark, in this brief resume of the 
evidence, that the agency of some, at least, of the Eomish priest- 
hood, which may be traced from the beginning in this affair, comes 
in at last, with a puerile effort in the shape of forgery, to prevent 
the truth from coming to light, and thus, providentially, affords the 



CONCLtTSION. 455 

crowning confirmation. I ha^e spoken severely of this act of 
wickedness, but not one half as severely as it deserves, for if 
such things are tolerated in this country, religion is dishonored, law 
is a farce, liberty a name, and reputation the prey of every de- 
famer. 

^o outline of the evidence, in this case, can do justice to it, as it 
stands in its living force and freshness, and if any one shall chance 
to open the volume at its termination, to see what has been accom- 
plished, I must refer him to the foregoing pages for information. 
But rapid as has been the accumulation of evidence on this subject, 
I should not be surprised to find that it increases in every direction. 
The stores of Europe remain yet untouched. It is not too late to 
recover everything which relates to this transaction. I am much 
inclined to think that Talleyrand was fully conversant with the 
whole. We have seen that, when in this country, he was in com- 
munication with old Jacob Vanderheyden, an Indian trader, who 
was present at the time that Mr. Williams was left among the 
Indians; and it is not too much to hope that, when the period 
comes, for the opening of his Memoirs, the whole facts relative to 
the removal of Louis XVII. may come to light. 

The saddest thought, to my mind, connected with the whole of 
this dark historic drama, which convicts of crime and perfidy so 
many who have stood high in name and power, is that the sister 
knew the brother's doom. And yet, I would not speak or think 
harshly of the Duchess of Angouleme. She was the victim of 
the unnatural and abhorrent villainy of Louis XVIII, and was 
entrapped, ere she was aware, in the meshes of a dark web of sub- 
tle fraud, from which she could not, throughout life, escape. At 
first, she was taught to believe her brother dead, and, before she 
knew the contrary, found herself the wife of him to whoril the 
crown would, in all human probability, ultimately fall, in conse- 
quence of the removal of Louis XVII. from France. And when 
the fact did come to her knowledge, she, doubtless, had no idea of 
the ultimate designs of her uncle, but regarded the exiled child 



456 THE LOST PRINCE. 

as placed in security till the political storm was entirely over. In 
this frame of mind she could speak to one who enjoyed her confi- 
dence with pleasure of her conviction of his safety, and cherish 
the hope that in brighter days they would be again united. It is 
not difficult to picture the conflict of feeling which would rise in 
her mind, when the overthrow of Napoleon brought again the 
crown of France within reach of the House of Bourbon, nor the sub- 
tle arguments used by the uncle, who had the authority of a 
father, to prove how expedient it was for the welfare of all, for 
the happiness of France, for the repose of Europe, for the preven- 
tion of such scenes of blood as 1793 exhibited, that the Gallic 
crown should be placed on the brow of one competent to govern. 
What a contrast could be drawn between the mature statesman, 
educated in the midst of courts, acquainted with every avenue of 
diplomacy, and all the reciprocally balancing powers of which 
Europe is composed, and the half-barbaric boy, ignorant of French 
language and habits, ignorant of political life, ministering to savages 
in a western wilderness, and above all, a Protestant. It would be 
said, and said, too, with much appearance of reason, that to place 
such an individual on the throne of France, in 1814, would bo to 
ensure a relapse into anarchy ; that he could only be a mere tool of 
others; that he could, for a long time, have no opinion of his own; 
and, in the old cant phrase of the proclamation, of 1795, "France 
needed a father," and not a monarch in leading-strings. The heir 
presumptive to the throne stood by her side as a husband ; and could she 
for so dubious a benefit as a crown, which had proved to her father 
an instrument of death, recall from rustic happiness and security, one 
who suffered no wrong, because not conscious of any, while she 
endangered the welfare, and sacrificed the interests of all she 
loved, and prepared for France and Europe, just resting after their 
long convulsion, an endless succession of those evils which accom- 
pany weakness and misrule ? All this she could understand and 
submit to — but conceive her feelings and her indignation when 
requested to receive the dried heart of her wronged and exiled 



CONCLUSION. 457 

brother ; or admire the clmste harmony of the epitaph, which, in 
strains of Augustan elegance, spoke of the forlorn boy as travelling 
starlike in the heavens, and from his pathway of eternal light, 
gazing with calm eye of angel love, on the aifectionate uncle who 
had swindled him out of empire, and, in return, would exalt, while 
living, into the paper paradise of liome, the Protestant who would 
certainly be excluded froi.n it when dead. 

It is said, the duchess never smiled, but went through life and to 
the tomb, bowed down by some deep-seated and mysterious sorrow. 
Many a niglit may she have spent, like that so graphically described 
by the Viscountess Chateaubriand, pacing her apartment in restless 
agony, unable to lay her perturbed spirit, and writhing, amid the 
splendors of royalty, in inward humiliation and self-upbraiding sor- 
row. Yes, the sister was the victim of tlie ambition of others 
and more to be pitied in her titled desolation than the hardy man, 
toiling on a far strand in the dusty thoroughfare of com.mon life, but 
still able to breast with honest heart tlie crush and variation of the 
crowd, and lift to heaven a trusting eye. As for those whose 
ambition demanded of a weak woman's heart this costly sacrifice, 
verily they had their reward. On no page of history are the 
stern retributive workings of Providence more legibly inscribed 
than on that which chronicles the history of the Bourbons since 
the first French Revolution. The curse of impotence has rested on 
all they essayed to do. No sooner were they lifted, on the tide of 
events, towards an apparently stable throne, than they were 
dashed back again, and engulfed in the abyss from which they had 
emerged. Reiterated exiles, agitations, assassinations, tracked 
their career. Life, with them, was all unreal. In their proudest 
days they were but crowned brigands. Distrust, suspicion, felon 
fear, pursued them till the last. In vain was the cry of legitiipacy 
raised to support that which was illegitimate. In vain did monar- 
chical Europe rally, to ensure to them a throne, which they had 
neither wisdom to preserve, nor courage to defend. Their's was 
"a barren sceptre," 



458 THE LOST PRINCE. 

" Wrenched from their grasp by an unlineal hand 
No son of theirs succeeding," 

and be it fiction or be it fact, the prophecy of the letter read by 
the midnight lamp, shall be fulfilled to its final punctuation, and on 
their dynasty, their name, their lineage, and their memory shall be 
stamped with livid hand — " Death ! ! !" 

A word before I conclude, with respect to the position of Mr. 
Williams. On his part there is no claim and no pretension. The 
last thought in his mind is that of political elevation. Educated in 
a republican country, he is himself a republican in sentiment 'and 
feeling. A minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church, he has no 
wish but to labor in her fold and worship at her altar until death. 
Devoted to the regeneration of the Indian, his chief earthly hope 
is to rear among those formerly reputed his countrymen, a temple 
to the name of the Almighty God, which shall be at once a means 
in future years of recalling them from their ignorance and vice, 
and a monument of his love and sacrifices for them. He is now 
rapidly approaching that period of life when the ambitions and the 
interests of earth are of little avail. Had he known all he now 
does, thirty or even twenty years earlier, the case might have been 
difiierent. If at times thoughts and aspirations of a different cha- 
racter have entered his mind, he has now dismissed them ; and to 
go down to a Christian's grave in peace, usefulness, and honor, is 
all he wishes for himself, and all his friends wish for him. 

His late years have been embittered by many sorrows, and espe- 
cially by the knowledge of his early history, and having been 
myself the means of dragging him into an unpleasant notoriety, I 
have deemed it my duty to do what lay within the power of an 
unpractised pen, to vindicate him from assaults. 

To the eye of a cold philosophy, kings and the sons of 
kings, are much like other men — but few of us are philosophers, 
and God forbid we should be, if it would deprive of sympathy for 
the fallen. If I read any truth in history it is, that the hand of 
God is there, guiding the motions of the vast machine of human 



CONCLDSION. 459 

destiny, and making kings and rulers, and great men, statesmen, 
orators and poets, the agents for accomplishing his all-wise designs, 
nor can I, from the loop-holes of republican retreat, gaze with 
cynical eye upon the centuries that are fled, nor on the realms that 
are afar. The blood of a Bourbon or a Guelph may be composed 
of much the same ingredients as my own — but I recognise in it a 
something which the Providence of God has sanctified through 
many generations, and I confess to the weakness of dropping a 
tear at the thought of the forlorn descendant of European kings, 
ministering, on the desolate outskirts of civilization, to the scanty 
remnant of a race, once the barbaric sovereigns of this continent. 
"But God, who deals equally with all, has, doubtless, granted to 
him as much happiness in the toils of missionary life, as to those 
who have successively occupied the throne of his fathers. 

" Stemmata quid faciunt ? quid prodest, Pontice, longo 
Sanguine censeri, pictosque ostendere vultus 
Majorum, et stantes in curribus jEmilianos, 
* * * * Nulla aconita bibuntur 
Pictilibus : tunc ilia time, quum pocula sumes 
Gemmata et lato Setinum ardebit in auro.' 

What boots it to be deemed of regal birth 

And reckon ancestors in endless line, 

"Warriors enthroned, bright dames and steel clad knights ? 

****** 

No aconite is drank in cups of earth ; 

Then may you fear it when your fingers clasp, 

A jewelled goblet and the Setine wine, 

Sparkles in ample gold. 



APPENDIX. 



[Appendix A. — Page 31.] 

Asserted Correspondence of the Count de Provence. 

Note by the Hon. and Rev. G. C. Percival, accompanying the asserted let- 
ters of Louis XVIII. to the Duke Fitz-James, and the Count D'Artois. 

The letters professedly written by the Count de Provence, afterwards 
Louis XVIIL, are of so atrociously wicked a character, so calculated to 
blacken his memory for ever, and, what is more startling, that of Charles 
X.. that the editor would gladly have avoided being the instrument of 
increasing their publicity. The French editor is not only perfectly satis- 
fied of their authenticity, but maintains that he could prove it incontestibly 
in a court of justice. Unfortunately, there was a time when the princes 
of the blood royal were not the best friends of Louis XVI. and his queen ; 
and the Count de Provence, at the beginning of the Eevolution, proved 
himself anything but what he ought to have been. 



LETTERS FROM THE COUNT I)E PROVENCE. 

To the Duke Fitz-James. 

Versailles, May 13, 1787. 
Here is, my dear duke, the Assembly of Notables drawing to its close, 
and yet the great question has not been touched upon. You cannot 
doubt that the Notables will not hesitate to believe, from the documents 
which you sent them, more than six weeks ago, that the king's children 
are not his own. These papers give the clearest proofs of the queen's 
guilty conduct. You are a subject too much attached to the blood of your 
sovereign, not to blush at bowing before these adulterous fruits. I shall 
be absent, but my brother, D'Artois, whose committee does not hold its 
sitting, will preside in ray place. The fact in question once averred, it is 
easy to infer the consequences. The parliament, which dislikes the queen, 



462 APPENDIX. 

will not make any great difficulty ; but, if it should have the fancy to 
raise any, we have the means of bringing it to reason. In short, we must 
attempt the blow. 

Loins Sta!«jislaus Xavier. 



To the Count IPArtois. 

It is done, my brother, the blow is struch. I hold in my hand the official 
news of the. death of the unfortunate Louis XYL, and have only time to 
forward it to you. I am informed, also, that his son is dying. You will 
not forget how useful to the state their death will be. Let this reflection 
console you, and remember that the Grand Prior, your son, is, after me, 
the hope and heir of the monarchy. 

Louis Stanislaus Xavier. — 
Perdval. page 147. 



[Appendix 3.— Page 120.] 

A new and most extraordinary interest has begun to invest his tragical 
story in this very month of April, 1853 ; at least, it is now first brought 
before universal Christendom. In the monthly journal of Putnam (pub- 
lished in New York), the number for April contains a most interesting 
memoir upon the subject, signed J. H. Hanson. Naturally, it indisposed 
most readers to put faith in any fresh pretensions of this nature, that, at 
least, one false Dauphin had been pronounced such, by so undeniable a 
judge as the Duchesse D'Angouleme. Meantime, it is made probable 
enough, by Mr. Hanson, that the true Dauphin did not die, in the year 
1795, at the Temple, but was personated by a boy unknown; that two 
separate parties had an equal interest in sustaining this fraud, and did 
sustain it ; but one would hesitate to believe whether, at the price of mur- 
dering a celebrated physician ; that they had the Prince conveyed secretly 
to an Indian settlem^ent in Lower Canada, as a situation in which French, 
being the prevailing language, would attract no attention, as it must have 
done in most parts of North America ; that the boy was educated and 
trained as a missionary clergyman ; and, finally, that he is now acting 
in that capacity, under the name of Eleazar Williams, perfectly aware of 
th^ royal pretensions put forward on his behalf, but equally, through age 
(being about sixty-nine) and through absorption in spiritual views, indif- 
ferent to these pretensions. It is admitted, on all hands, that the Prince 
de Joinville had an interview with Eleazar Williams, a dozen years since ; 
the Prince alleges, through mere accident, but this seems improbable ; and 
Mr. Hanson is likely to be right in supposing this visit to have been a pre- - 



APPENDIX. .463 

concerted one, growing out of some anxiety to test the reports current, so 
far as they were grounded upon resemblances in Mr. "Williams's features to 
those of the Bourbon and Austrian families. The most pathetic fact is 
that of the idiocy common to the Dauphin and Mr. Eleazar Williams. It 
is clear, from all the most authentic accounts of the young prince, that 
idiocy was, in reality, stealing over him ; due, doubtless, to the stunning 
aature of the calamities that overwhelmed his family ; to the removal from 
him, by tragical deaths, in so rapid a succession, of the Princess de Lam- 
balle, of his aunt, of his father, of his mother, and others whom he most 
had loved ; to his cruel separation from his sister ; and to the astounding (for 
him naturally incomprehensible) change that had come over the demeanor 
and the language of nearly all the people placed about the persons of him- 
self and his family. An idiocy resulting from what must have seemed a 
causeless and demoniac conspiracy, would be more likely to melt away 
under the sudden transfer to kindness, and the gaiety of forest life, than 
any idiocy belonging to original organic imbecility. Mr. "Williams 
describes his own confusion of mind as continuing up to his fourteenth 
year, and all things which had happened, in earlier years, as gleaming 
through clouds of oblivion, and as painfully perplexing ; but, otherwise, 
he shows no desire to strengthen the pretensions made for himself, by any 
reminiscences piercing these clouds, that could point specially to France, 
or to royal experiences. — Thomas de Qiiince'y''s Autobiographical Sketches^ 
vol. i. p. .330. 



[Appendix G.—Page 120.] 

Declaration of the Death of Louis XVII. 

Section of the Temple, year 3 of the French Eepublic, 22d Prauial, 
decease of Louis Charles Capet, aged teij years and two months, profes- 
sion , resident at Paris, in the Tower of the Temple, son of Louis 

Capet, last King of the French, and of Marie Antoinette, of Austria. The 
deceased was born at Versailles, and died the day before yesterday, at 
three o'clock in the afternoon. On the requisition made to us, within the 

twenty-four hours, by Etienne Lasne, aged thirty-nine, profession , 

resident at Paris, E,ue et Maison des Droits de I'homme, No. 41, such 
declarant- calling himself keeper of the children of Capet, and by Baptiste 
Gomin, thirty-five, profession, French citizen, resident at Paris, Rue de la 
Fraternite, No. 39, such declarant calling himself Commissary of the Con- 
vention for the Guard of the Temple, the present declaration has been 
received in presence of the citizens Nicola Lawrence Arnoult, and Domi- 
nique Goddet, Civic Commissaries of the Section du Temple, in terms of 



464 APPENDIX. 

the decree of the Committee of General Safety, and who have signed 
with us. 

Lasne, Arnoult, 
goddet, gomin, 

Cow/missaries. 
Verified according to the Law of the lOth December, by me, commissary 
of police of the said section. Dusser. 

As Beauchesne has produced nothing more pertinent in the way of 
proof than this, he might have spared himself the trouble of twenty years 
composition, and printed the original certificate of Lasne and Gomin on a 
thousand consecutive pages. 



Appendix D. — Page 176, 

Albany^ 7 Oct.^ 1853. 
Sir. — If the following remarks are considered of importance in the inves- 
tigation you are prosecuting respecting the history of Monsieur Eleazar 
"Williams, you are at perfect liberty to make use of them as you please. 

Among the reminiscences of early days, I have always recollected with 
much interest being taken by my mother to visit a family who arrived here 
in 1795, direct from France, consisting of four individuals. There was a 
gentleman and lady, called Monsieur and Madame de Jardin. They had 
with them two children, a girl and a boy — the girl was the eldest — the boy 
about nine or ten. He apparently did not notice us. 

Their arrival caused considerable excitement in our city, and those ladies 
who could converse in the French language felt it their duty to call on 
Madame. They were but few in number, and as far as I can recollect are 
now registered as inhabitants of that world where the events and cares of 
this cannot interest us any more. 

On my first visit I was much struck with the appearance of the family. 
A gentleman was in the hall. He showed us into the parlor, but did not 
enter with us. His dress was very plain, and as I never saw him except 
at that time, I could never realize how he was connected with the family. 
We were received with politeness by Madame. She was imposing and 
agreeable in her language and appearance, had large dark-colored eyes, and 
every way evinced a great desire to welcome us. After a short interview, 
she took me to a room up-stairs with shelves on one side of the wall, and 
containing a number of handsome books, many of which had. elegant prints. 
On a table were jointed cards and other articles for amusement, and there 
were in the room two pussey cats full of frolic. 

I was here introduced to Mademoiselle Louisa and Monsieur Louis. 



APPENDIX. 465 

Mademoise e and I played together, but Monsieur Louis did not join ua. 
He was dressed in shorts, and amused himself, at some distance from us, in 
balancing himself over a cane or something in that way. Madame told 
my mother that she was maid of honor to the Queen Marie Antoinette, 
and was separated from her on the terrace at the palace. She appeared 
very much agitated, and mentioned many things which I was too young 
to understand, but all in allusion J;o the difficulties then agitating France, 
and her friends. She played with great skill on the piano forte, and was 
much excited singing the Marseilles Hymn, floods of tears chasing each 
other down her cheeks. My mother thought the children were those 
belonging to the crown, but I do not now recollect that she said Madame 
told her so. After some time, Madame called and said they were obliged 
to leave us, and had' many useful and handsome articles to dispose of, and 
wished my mother to have the first choice out of them. 

There were several large plates of mirror glass, a time-piece, a pair of 
gilt andirons representing lions, and a bowl, said to be gold, on which were 
engraven the arms of France. I have heard it spoken of some time after; 
and it was said to belong to some gentleman near Albany, and was recog- 
nised at a dinner party, with celery on the table. 

The andirons were purchased by Gen. Peter Gansevoort's lady, and are 
still belonging to a member of that family. 

We never heard of this family after they left Albany. In looking at the 
features of Eleazar Williams I think I can discover considerable likeness to 
those of the young Monsieur Louis in charge of Madame de Jardin. 

Blendusia Dudley. 
Rev. J. H. Hanson. 



[Appendix E. No. 1. — Tage 177.] 

Affidavit of John 0''Brien. 

John O'Brien, a half-breed Lidian, otherwise known as Skenondough, 
deposes and says, that he resides in the town of Salina, Onondaga county, 
State of New York, that he is known to the Hon. P. Sken Smith, of Phila- 
delphia, and to Gerrit Smith, Squire Johnson, Mayor Baldwin, and Lawyer 
Wood, of Syracuse ; that he is now directly from Philadelphia, where he was 
taken sick-, on his way to Washington, and is returning to Salina ; that he 
is now very aged, having been born in Stockbridge, Mass., in 1752 ; that 
his father was an Irishman, of the name of William O'Brien, and his mother 
an Indian woman, of the Oneida tribe, named Mary Skenondough ; that, 
at the age of twelve years, he was sent from America to France, for his 
education, and remained there until during the War of the Revolution, 

20* 



466 APPENDIX. 

when he returned, in the same ship with Lafayette, to America. After 
his return, this deponent went among the Oneida Indians in the State of 
New York, and, in the year 1795, was at Tieonderoga, on Lake George. 
At that time two Frenchmen came to the Indians on Lake George, and 
this deponent oonversed with them in their own language. Their names 
deponent does not remember. They had with them a boy, which this 
deponent supposed to be between ten and twelve years of age. This boy 
the deponent talked with in the French language. The two Frenchmen 
told this deponent that the boy was French, by birth. The boy seemed 
weak and sickly, and his mind was wandering, so that he seemed rather 
silly. This child, after the Frenchmen had departed, this deponent saw in 
the family of Thomas Williams, an Indian, where the child lived. This 
deponent further recollects that he was at Lake George some time after 
this, when this boy, playing with the other children, fell, or threw himself 
from a rock into the lake, and was taken out with a wound, he thinks 
upon the head, and was carried into the hut of Thomas Williams. After 
this he, from time to time, saw the boy, and that boy is the person now 
known as the Eev. Eleazar Williams. Deponent further declares that, in 
1815, when Mr. Williams first came to Oneida Castle, to preach to the 
Indians, deponent was there, and asked Mr. Williams if he remembered 
his fall into the lake, which he did not. Deponent also further declares, 
that one of the two Frenchmen who brought the child to Lake George 
seemed to have the appearance of a priest of the church of Rome. Depo- 
nent recollects Colonel Lewis, Captain Peters, Captain Jacob Francis, chiefs 
of the St. Regis tribe, who always believed Mr. Williams to be a French- 
man. This deponent also declares that he was acquainted with Thomas 
Williams, and Mary Ann, his wife, and that there is no resemblance 
between the 'Ejer. Eleazar Williams and the said Thomas Williams or 
his wife, or any of the children of the said Thomas Williams and his wife 
Mary Ann, who were known also to this deponent. This deponent also 
further declares that Captain Jasper Parish, of Canandaigua, was appointed 
by the General or State Government, agent for the Six Nations, some time 
before the war of 1812, and after the war was over, in the year 1815, he 
took the census of each family, for the purpose of distributing the presents 
from the government. Eleazar Williams was set down by Captain Parish 
on the record as a Frenchman, adopted by the St. Puegis tribe, and trans- 
ferred to the Oneidas. This deponent was, at the time, a member of the 
general council of the nation, serving in the capacity of Marshal, and 
gave, himself; the returns to Ca,ptain Parish ; and this deponent has seen 
the record of the census, which record may probably be found at Canan- 
daigua, by writing to Mr. Edward Pai-ish aforesaid. This deponent 
further says, that he remembers the spot at which the child now known as 



APPENDIX. 467 

Eleazar fell into the water, and that it was at the south end of Lake 
George, on the west side, not far from the Old Fort. 

John O'Brien. 
Sworn before me, this 14th day of June, 1853. 

Richard Busteed, 

Commissioner of Deeds^ 

45 William Street, New York. 

At my request, the Rev. Francis Vinton, D.D,, of Brooklyn, who was 
present at the examination of O'Brien, and aided to take down his state- 
ment, wrote to the Hon. B. Sken Smith, of Philadelphia, brother of 
Gerrit Smith, and obtained the following answer : 

"My Dear Sir, 

"I have been much indisposed, and not able to answer your letter of 
the 18th ult. till now, and am still weak. I have known John O'Brien 
Skenondough, a half-breed Indian of the Oneida tribe, for thirty years and 
upwards. I suspect the ' important testimony' from him, which you refer 
to, relates to the Rev. Mr. Williams. I hesitate not to say, Skenondough 
can be relied on. I also know much of Mr. Williams. 

" In much haste, very truly and respectfully yours, 

"B. Sken Smith." 

I opened, myself, a correspondence with the Rev. Mr. Ashley, of Syra- 
cuse, in order to obtain information from the other gentlemen referred to 
by Skenondough, but the letters in reply, of that gentleman, never reached 
me, like many others, which appear to have been intercepted. I would 
say that Skenondough is nephew of the old war chief Skenondough, who 
died some years ago, at the age of 112, and also that, as assistant sur- 
geon, he dressed the wounds of Lafayette, at the battle of Brandywine. 



[Appendix E. No. 2.— Pag-e 177.] 

Writing of E. Williams^ while insane^ f reserved. 

1 will mention here a fact, which, however interesting, I have not stated 
in the text, because the evidence on which it rests is, unfortunately, only 
that of the testimony of Mr. Williams ; and, though I believe his word is 
as good as that of any one in the world, certain persons are perpetually 
harping on the chord, " Oh, Mr. Williams says so." There is now before 
me an Indian mass book, in MS., which, from the color of the paper, the faded, 



468 APPENDIX. 

writing, and its dilapidated condition, seems at least two centuries old. It 
was given Mr. Williams in 1836, by an Indian woman, now dead, who 
told him that, while in an insane condition, he one day snatched a pen, 
and wrote in it a number of figures and letters. There is, on one of the 
covers, on the inside, in French characters, the numerals from 1 to 30, and 
from 1 to 19 ; a letter c, precisely like that element in the handwi-iting of 
the Dauphin while under the care of Simon ; and, in a less distinct form, 
hut still quite legible, the word due, and the letters Loui. One thing is 
evident, the numerals and letters are the random scribbling of a child, and 
they are many years old. 



[Appendix Y.^Page 183.] 

Baptismal "Record. 

Extracts des registres de la Mission du Sault St. Louis. 

1779, du 7 Janvier, Thomas Tehora Kwanekeu a Spouse Marie Anne, 
fille de Haronhumanen. Leurs enfants sent 



Jean Baptiste, 


ne le 


7 Sept. 


1780. 


Catherine, 


nee le 


4 Sept. 


1781. 


Thomas, 


nele 


28 Avr. 


1786. 


Louise, 


nee le 


18 Mai, 


1791. 


Jeanne Baptiste, 


a 


21 Avr. 


1793. 


Pierre, 


ne le 


25 Aout, 


1795. 


Pierre, 


i( 


4 Sept. 


1796. 


Anne, 


nee le 


30 Janv. 


1799. 


Dorothee, 


;( 


2 Aout, 


1801. 


Charles, 


ne 


8 Sept. 


1804. 


JervaiSj 


cc 


22 Juil. 


1807. 
Marcoux, Prete. 



[Appendix G-. — Page 189.] 
Ely MSS. 
These MSS. were obtained in 1851, from Col. Mack, of Amherst, Mass., 
who married the eldest daghter of Deacon Ely. 



[Appendix H. — Page 190.] 
First coming to Long Meadow. 
We are assured by one of their schoolmates, who remembers their 



APPENDIX. 



469 



entrance into the village, in their Indian costume, that a distinction was at 
once perceived between Eleazar and John. John was evidently of Indian 
blood. He showed no fondness for study, always kept his bows and arrows 
hid away, and on any excuse or occasion would make use of them. Elea- 
zar although entirely illiterate when he came there, soon became fond of 
his books. John learned little or nothing, and soon returned home. 
Eleazar made satisfactory progress and remained. His affable manners 
were such as to excite unusual attention in a quiet village, not much used 
to exaggerations T)f the graces of life, so that he was always called a plausi- 
ble boy. He was thought by his schoolmates somewhat haughty, despised 
the Indian games of his supposed ' brother, and yet was led by those who 
had learned his character, without much difficulty. These peculiarities 
we have heard spoken of quite independently of any presumption that Mr. 
Williams was other than a son of Thomas Williams. 

The only considerations of importance which those who knew Mr. Wil- 
liams at West Hampton can contribute to the inquiry respecting his birth 
is the fact that he showed none of the traits of the Indian race, and although 
spoken of as an Indian, was not really regarded as of Indian blood.-Boston 
Daily Advertiser, February 17, 1853. 

[Appendix I.— No \.—Page 190.] 

Affidavit of Urania Smith. 

Declaration of TJrania Smith, Point Washington, Ozaukee County, Wis- 
consin. 

J, Urania Smith, do hereby declare that my maiden name was Urania 
Stebbings, that I was born on March 22d, in the year 1786, in Long Mea- 
dow, Massachusetts, that I was deprived of my parents when young, and 
was brought up by Ethan Ely, of Long Meadow, Massachusetts, who was 
my uncle, and lived next door to Deacon Nathaniel Ely. In the beginning 
of the year 1800, two boys were brought from Canada to Long Meadow, to 
receive an education, and lived with Nathaniel Ely, who had charge of 
them. They were said by the said Nathaniel Ely to be called Eleazar or 
Lazau Williams and John WUliams, and were represented as the descend- 
ants of the Rev. John Williams, who was captured by the Indians in the 
year 1704, at Deerfield. They were entirely unlike each other in complex- 
ion, appearance, form and disposition, John having the look of an Indian, 
and Eleazar that of an European. I distinctly remember that when the 
said Nathaniel Ely was remonstrated with for calling Eleazar and John 
brothers, as there was no similarity between them, he said there was some- 
thing about it which he should probably never reveal ; that Eleazar Wil- 



470 APPENDIX. 

liams was bom for a great man, and that he intended to give him an 
education to prepare him for the station. Eleazar was very rapid in his 
acquisitions of learning, and wrote at an early period. Much notice was 
taken of him by everybody, and Mr. Ely was very fond of exhibiting him 
to strangers. 

Urania Smith. 
Sworn to and subscribed before me, October 8, 
1853, at Point Washington. 

Lafayette Forsley, I. P. 

Clerk Ozmckee District Court. 



[Appe;ndix I. — No 2. — Page 190.] 

Exjjenses of Eleazar Williams paid from France. From the Albany Morn- 
ing Fpxress, Oct. 10. 1853. 

As we remarked the other day, there are strong circumstances in favor 
of the assumption set up by Mr. Hanson. One of the strongest to our mind 
is the fact, that certain gentlemen of this city for many years received regu< 
larly a sum of money from France, to be applied to the clothing and educa- 
tion of this same Williams. How is this fact to be accounted for, except 
npon the supposition that Williams is indeed the Dauphin. 



[Appendix K.—Fage 324.— Page 190.] 

Title Deed of Mrs. Williams'' s Estate. 

Know all men by these presents, that w^e, the chiefs, warriors, and head 
men of the Menominie nation of Indians, living and residing on the 
banks of Fox Pbiver and Green Bay, for and in consideration of the 
love and friendship we entertain for Magdeline Williams, and her heirs, of 
the Menominie Nation, and, also, in consideration of the sum of fifty dol- 
lars, to us in hand paid, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, 
have given, granted, bargained, sold, and quit claimed to the said Magde- 
line Williams and her heirs for ever, all that certain piece or parcel of 
land situated, lying, and being on the north-west side of Fox River, at a 
place usually called Little Cacalin, bounded and described as follows : — 
Commencing at low water mark on Fox River, opposite to the loWer end 
of "Black Bird Island," so called, and running thence up said river three 
hundred and fifty chains, thence north-west, two hundred and fifty chains, 
theuQ© north-eastj three hundred and fifty chains, thence south east, two 



APPENDIX. 471 

hundred and fifty chains, to the place of beginning, be tiie same more or 
less, together with all, and singular, the a.ppurtenances and hereditaments 
in any manner thereto appertaining or belonging to her, the said Magde- 
line Williams and her heirs, for ever, provided, nevertheless, that the said 
Magdeline Williams shall not, in any manner hereafter, for ever sell or 
dispose of the same, or any part thereof. In testimony vv^hereof, we here- 
unto put our hands and seals, this 22d day of August, eighteen hundred 
and twenty-five. 

his 
Sarkstok, + [Seal.] 

mark. 

his 
PiNONTO-OH, alias Blanded, + [Seal.] 

mark, 
his 
Sho-min, + [Seal.] 

mark. 

his 
Matsi ki Neaoh, + [Seal.] 

mark, 
his 
Kesha Shik, + [Seal.] 

mark. 

his 
Ota tsi a Kiaoh, + [Seal.] 

mark 
Signed, sealed, and delivered in 
presence of A. S. Ellis. 



[Appendix L. — Fage 324.] 
Certificate of Mr. J. F. Schermerhorn. 

[copy.] 

I hereby certify that the following provision, in the 3d Article of the 
Treaty concluded by me with the New York Indians, in Council at Duck 
Creek, on 16th day of September, 1836, in behalf of the St. Regis Indians, 
in the following words, viz : " Out of the above sum of $340,000, shall 
be allowed and paid the sum of $5000 to the St. Regis tribe, as a remu- 
neration for the money laid out and expended by the said tribe and par- 
ties, and for services rendered by their chiefs and agents, in securing the 
title to these lands (viz. Green Bay, W. T.) and removal to the same, to be 
apportioned and paid out to the several claimants, by the chiefs and com- 
missioners of the United States, as may be deemed by them equitable and 



4*72 APPENDIX. 

just." and which said provision was inserted and made in the treaty 
finally concluded at the Buffalo Creek Preservation, January 15, 1838, in 
the language as above recited, understood when the treaty was nmade and 
concluded to be $1000, if paid to the St. Eegis Tribe fo^ their claims for 
advances made by them, and the balance, being $4000, was intended to 
remunerate the Ptev. Eleazar Williams, as one of the Chiefs of the St. 
Eegis Indians, and their agent, for his services for years, for securing the 
title to the Green Bay land, and for removing thither, and by whose exer- 
tions and persevering efforts these lands were finally attained for the New 
York Indians from the Menominies and Winnebago Indians, as is evident 
from the document on this subject, on file at the Indian Department at 
Washington. These facts being known to me personally, I deem it my 
duty, in justice to Mr. Williams, to make the above statement. 

J. F. SCHERMERHORN, 

Commissioner to treat with New York Indians, 1837. 
Washington City^ June 21, 1838. 

The foregoing, enclosed to the President, July 10, 1838. Package of 
papers, &c., marked W. 572, Indian Office Files, Green Bay, 1838. 



[Appendix M. — Page 424.] 

General Cass. 

The following is the pith of General Cass's letter, and of my reply : — 

St. Clair. R&ply. 

His color, his features, and the There are no traces of the abo- 

conformation of his (Mr. Williams) riginal or Indian in him. Ethno- 
face testify to his origin. They logy gives no countenance to such 
present the very appearance which a conclusion. This fact is verified 
everywhere marks the half-breed by anotomical examination by Drs. 
Indian. Francis and Kissam. 

I have seen persons partaking of In painting the portrait of Mr. 

the Bourbon blood, and I endeavor Williams, I noticed many of the 
in vain to recall any decisive traits peculiar characteristics which are 
of resemblance between them and developed, in a greater or less de- 
Mr. Williams. gree in most of the Princes of the 

House of Bourbon, whose portraits 
I have taken. I was particularly 
impressed with his resemblance to 
the portraits of Louis XVI. and 



APPENDIX. 



4'78 



CUair, 



The death of the Dauphin is a 
fact as well established as any inci- 
dent of that kind can be. 

If I am not in error, there was a 
proces verbal, a kind of French 
legal narrative, which recorded the 
circumstances of his illness and his 
decease. 

The Dauphin was attended, to- 
wards the close of his life, by De- 
sault, a physician of the highest 
personal professional character, and 
who could neither be guilty of im- 
position, nor suffer it in relation to 
the true condition of his interest- 
ing patient. 

I have no belief that such a dia- 
ry as that which purports to re- 
count the interview between the 
French Prince and the French pre- 
tender was ever kept by Williams. 
I can see no reason for it. His 
usual uneventful life furnished 
neither motive nor material for 
such a daily recurring labor. 



Reply. 

XVIII., and the general Bourbonic 
outline of his face. Had I met 
Mr. "Williams, unconscious that he 
was in any way other than his 
name would indicate, I should im- 
mediately have spoken of his like- 
ness to the Bourbon family. — ^Vide 
letter of Chevaher Fagnani, in 
" Putnam," for April. 

I have myself shown, I consider, 
conclusively, that the fact is not 
and cannot be established. It is 
mere ignorance to assert that it is. 

St. Clair's historic knowledge is 
of that peculiar kind which is pro- 
verbially dangerous. 



True, but the close of Desault's 
life was prior to the asserted close 
of the Dauphin's, and the high 
moral and professional character of 
this eminent physician forms an 
adamantine link in the evidence 
which disproves the death of the 
royal child. 

It is vain to theorize against 
facts. Mr. Williams has kept a 
journal, and if St. Clair wishes, he 
can read in it the record of certain 
proceedings between General Cass 
and the Indians at Butte des Morts, 
in 1827, together with other not 
uneventful occurrences, with which 
St. Clair may be familiar, and to 
the publication even of which Mr. 
Williams can have no objection, 
provided St. Clair can obtain the 
consent of "the distinguished 
western statesman," above men- 
tioned. 



474 



APPENDIX. 



St. Clair. 



Reply. 



The Count de Chambord, the son 
of Charles X. the youngest brother 
of Louis XVI. 

It is further stated that Mr. Wil- 
liams received letters from Louis 
Philippe and from the private Sec- 
retary of Louis Napoleon, &c. 
These were all burned, says the 
memoir. They never existed, says 
common sense. 



The Prince de Joinville inquired 
after Mr. Williams. So says Mr. 
Williams. 

Louis Philippe wrote him a let- 
ter. So says Mr. Williams. 

Ballanger confessed that he 
brought the Dauphin to this coun- 
try. So says Mr. Williams. 



I am sorry to be obliged to con- 
sider as apocryphal, the account of 
the magnificent brocade dress 
" against whose silken folds Mr. 
Williams had fondly rested, when 
the living loveliness of Marie An- 
toinette was within it," and it 
taxes my imagination beyond its 
capacity, when I am asked to pic- 
ture to myself my old Lidian 
acquaintance fondled in the arms 
of that beautiful queen. 



Another proof of the accuracy 
of St. Clair's historic knowledge. 
The Count de Chambord is son to 
the Due de Berri. 

No such stateinent was made. 
It is stated that Mr. Williams re- 
ceived a letter from Louis Philippe, 
and another purporting to be from 
the secretary of Louis Napoleon. 
As I mentioned that the note of 
the French consul-general, stating 
that it enclosed the letter of the 
French king, was before me at the 
time of writing, it is to be hoped 
that St. Clair alludes to his own 
common sense. 

And so also say Captain Shook, 
Mr. Brayman, and Mr. Raymond. 

And so says M. de la Forest, the 
then consul-general. 

And so said the southern news- 
papers of the time, from which 
Mr. Kimball, the informant of Mr. 
Williams, derived his knowledge. 
Respectable living gentlemen re- 
member reading those newspaper 
statements. 

That a trifle may tax the imagi- 
nation, or any other mental quali- 
ty of St. Clair, I can readily con- 
ceive. The dress was not adduced 
as evidence ; but the following 
note from the donor may explain 
the position of Mr. Williams in re- 
gard to it, and the probabilities 
that it is what it is said to be: — 

"Presented to the Rev. Mr. Wil- 
liams, with the respectful regards 
of Mrs. Edward Clarke, of North- 



APPENDIX. 



475 



St. Clair. 



That Mr. Williams is a respecta- 
ble clergyman. Mr. Williams has 
voluntarily placed himself in no 
enviable position. He must stand 
or fall not by his character, but by 
his proofs. The Romans said of 
the departed, " He has lived." I 
am afraid we shall have to say of 
Mr. Williams, " He has been a re- 
spectable clergyman." 



Repli/. 

ampton. Being in England some 
years since, I had an opportunity 
there to purchase this dress, once 
worn by Marie Antoinette, of 
France. It had been bought at the 
court by a gentlemen attached, at 
that time, to our embassy. — Puound 
Hill, Northampton, Jan. 3, 1851." 
That St. Clair is a distinguished 
statesman. St. Clair has volunta- 
rily placed himself in no enviable 
position. He must fall or stand, 
not by his character but by his 
proofs. The Eomans said of the 
departed, " He has lived." I am 
afraid, if the letter of St. Clair be 
the criterion of his claim to the 
title of a distinguished statesman, 
we shall have to say, "He has 
been distinguished." 



[Appendix N. — Fage 430.] 

Affidavit of Margaret Brown, of New Orleans. 

My name is Margaret Brown. I live in the city of New Orleans. I was 
born in the year 1779, but whether in Scotland or France is uncertain. I 
was educated in Scotland. The name of my first husband was Benjamm Oli- 
vier. He was a French Republican. I was married to him in Edinburgh 
and went with him to France. After the birth of my first child, I accom- 
panied him to Normandy. I was married a second time in 1804, to Joseph 
Deboit, then Secretary to the Count D'Artois, who was at that period 
residing at Holyrood House, in Edinburgh. The Count d'Artois left Scot- 
land shortly after my marriage with Deboit, who accompanied him. During 
the absence of the Count d'Artois from Edinbiu^, I lived in the vicinity 
of the palace, except a portion of the time when I joined my husband in 
London. The Count de Provence and the Duchesse d'Angouleme arrived 
in England, and I first saw them with the Count d'Artois in South Audley 
street, Grosvenor Square. In consequence of the situation held by my 
husband, I became very intimate with the Duchesse d'Angouleme and the 



476 APPENDIX. 

rest of the royal family, with whom I resided. Shortly after the arrival of 
the Duchesse d'Angouleme in England, in 1806 or 7, my curiosity having 
been excited by my husband, who had told me that the Dauphin was not 
dead, I asked the Duchesse her opinion respecting her brother's fate. The 
Duchesse d'Angouleme replied to me, that she knew he was alive and safe 
in America. At this period I first heard that a man named Bellanger, had 
carried the Dauphin to America, but whether it was from the Duchesse 
d'Angouleme or from Joseph Deboit I cannot now certainly say. But it 
was from one of the two, and my impression is that it was from the 
Duchesse. I distinctly remember that I heard the fact at that time from 
one of them, as they were the only persons with whom I spoke on the sub- 
ject, and also that the Duchesse d'Angouleme told me that she knew the 
Dauphin was then safe in America. Joseph Deboit died in 1810. Until 
his death I resided with him in Holyrood, in intimate acquaintance with 
the royal family. I went to France in 1811, to look after some property. 
I there married George Brown, an American, at Morley in France. Brown 
was sailing master to the True Blooded Yankee, under Commodore Preble's 
brother. In 1813, the aide-de-cainp of General Moreau gave me dispatches 
to carry to the Bourbon family in England. His name "w^as, I think, De 
Vaux. He put them between the ticking and the leather of the trunk. I 
took them in this way across the channel, and gave them into the hands of 
the Count d'Artois, in South Audley street, in the presence of M. de Belle- 
ville. Shortly after this I again went to France, and after remaining there 
a short time went to sea. with my husband. There was a dangerous mu- 
tiny on board. We arrived in the Brazils, and I kept school in St. Salvador. 
From St. Salvador I set out for New York with my husband in the Tom 
Bowling, Capt. Carleton. 

Mr. Brown died at sea on the 7th June, 1815. The Tom Bowling ar- 
rived in New York on or about July 4th, 1815. From New York I went to 
the Havana, and was housekeeper to Grey and Fernandez. T tbp" vp+:,-.>-v^oJ 
to Scotland. In the year 1817, I was living in the sam ^ ....^x *ou«uvja 
Chamberlaw, wife to the Secretary of the Count de Coig) .' house with Mrs. 
with the Count de Provence during his residence in E' ly, who had lived 
familiar both with the Count and Mrs. Chamberlaw >'inburgh. 1 was 
Deboit in the palace of Holyrood. Mrs. Chamberlaw t "tile I lived with 
time before, she had heard in the Tuileries tha,t the David me, iiba* some 
that a man named Bellanger had carried him to Philadelphia]- 'arni'that he 
was then known by the name of Williams. She mentioned his christian 
name, and I think I should remember it if I heard it. It was not Joseph. 
It was not Aaron. It seems to me that it was Eleazar. She said that 
Williams was a missionary among the Indians, and that the royal family 
said he was incompetent to reign. She also told me that a person came 



APPENDIX. 



4*79 



but to the infirm health of Mrs. Margaret Brown, and regard it as to the 
last degree improbable that she should state anything but the truth, 
Signed Charles Whitall. 

Sworn and subscribed before me, this 28th day of April, 1853, at the 
city of New Orleans. 

Signed G. Lugenbahl. 

I am myself personally acquainted with the parties whose affidavits are 
before given, and can cheerfully vouch for their respectability, and the 
entire reliability of their testimony. I have known Mrs. Margaret Brown 
for thirteen years, and believe her to be a religious, good woman. 

Signed G-. Lugenbahl, 5th Justice. 



[Appendix 0. — Page 436.] 

Names of the Children of Thomas Williams 

There are some striking discrepancies between the list of names, as given 
by Mrs. Williams, and the baptismal register at Caughnawaga. I do not 
pretend to account for this, except it can be ascribed to failure or confu- 
sion of memory on the part of the old woman, who appears to know 
little about Eleazar, except that he was " adopted," and brought to her 
by Thomas Williams. One great reason, I learn, why she has been 
hitherto unwilling to acknowledge boldly that Eleazar was her adopted 
child, was, that the idea was hinted to her that, being now without 
husband or children, and only Eleazar left, if she confessed he was not 
her child, he wovild think himself no more bound to take care of her. 



THE END. 




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